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Telehealth Accreditation Overview
Telehealth programs had already begun gaining momentum, but with COVID-19, the practice of delivering medical care virtually escalated from infrequent possibility to daily reality. In this rapidly changing field, telehealth providers who achieve URAC accreditation are at the forefront of the change, prepared to meet the evolving challenges and to benefit from coming opportunities.
URAC’s Telehealth Accreditation Program offers much more than validation of high performance by an independent third party. Accreditation could become a payer requirement and URAC delivers a flexible framework that readies your organization to succeed on this new frontier.
Achievement of the URAC Telehealth Accreditation seal is a mark of high-performing telehealth providers who believe in and practice excellence.
Once you begin the process, your organization can be fully accredited in six months or less.
Modular Approach
There are three areas that URAC's Telehealth Accreditation Program focuses on and we can help you choose the right one(s) for your business:
- Consumer-to-Provider (C2P) – For organizations who provide technology-facilitated care to patients who initiate the encounter.
- Provider-to-Consumer (P2C) – For organizations who provide technology-facilitated care to patients when the provider initiates the encounter.
- Provider-to-Provider (P2P) – For organizations who provide technology-facilitated consults to other providers for the care of a patient.
Telehealth Accreditation Puts Benefits
Telehealth is everywhere in health care today, meeting consumer and payer demand or due to emergency medical necessity. Simply put, URAC’s telehealth accreditation program readies your organization to meet those demands and exceed industry standards.
Benefits of URAC’s Telehealth Accreditation include:
- The ability to move faster and deliver quality care through development of a patient-centric playbook that integrates a common language and standardized processes, policies, and metrics throughout the entire organization
- Improvement of health outcomes through the strategic delivery of patient access, engagement and value
- Enhanced credibility and contracting power that assures public/private payers and stakeholders of your institutional rigor
- A roadmap for ongoing improvement to ensure the foundation for streamlined processes and systems
Accreditation Process: What to Expect
At URAC, our accreditation process is more than collecting metrics and checking boxes. URAC offers your organization a collaborative, comprehensive learning experience designed to enhance knowledge and promote quality practices.
The program helps highlight the work your organization already does to support patient access to care through virtual encounters.
Who May Apply
To be eligible for URAC’s Telehealth Accreditation, an organization must provide care via digital technology in patient-initiated or provider-initiated encounters. Organizations must be operating in the U.S. Download our Telehealth Standards-at-a-Glance for more information.
URAC’s Telehealth Accreditation Program is available to a wide range of telehealth organizations, including providers (e.g., physicians, nurses, hospital systems), health plans, specialty care organizations and organizations that offer telehealth services.
The URAC Difference
Our program defines the standards of excellence for telehealth, without prescribing how organizations must meet those standards, to allow this evolving industry to continue innovating while ensuring patient protection. For over 30 years, URAC's philosophy has been to convene experts to define rigorous standards that they may meet regardless of business model to allow an evolving industry, like telehealth, to continue innovating while meeting regulatory and quality standards.
URAC’s telehealth accreditation standards were developed in consultation with leading experts in the telehealth industry, including representatives from health care providers, technology firms, consumer organizations, insurers and academics. Industry best practices were identified in areas such as quality and coordination of care, access, safety, systems integrity and reliability, consumer protection and empowerment and regulatory compliance. Telehealth operations address organizational capacity, equipment safety, prescribing and patient consent.
URAC is also a member of the International Society for Telemedicine and eHealth (ISfTeH) and is leading the way in international accreditations for digital health.