View Free AAFP Telehealth Webinar Anytime, Anywhere

Whether you managed to catch the live broadcast “How and Why to Grow Telehealth In Your Practice” or you weren’t able to participate at that time, you can now view a recording of the event ― available exclusively to AAFP members. Learn about the current state of telehealth use in family medicine and the likely road forward for the technology in primary care by accessing the webinar on the AAFP website. 

Family physicians Stephen North, M.D., M.P.H., of Spruce Pine, N.C.; Karen Smith, M.D., of Raeford, N.C.; and Gail Guerrero-Tucker, M.D., M.P.H., of Thatcher, Ariz., join Waldren to offer insights on telehealth use in their respective practices and answer questions participants posed during the Dec. 4 session.

Like their colleagues across the country, the three FP guests have varying backgrounds in and previous experience with using this technology:

• North helped found and is medical director of a school-based telemedicine program that provides access to acute care, chronic disease management and adolescent medicine services for students across North Carolina. He also is a rural telehealth research fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a member of the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Rural Telehealth Research Center.
• Smith’s private practice, which she launched in 2004, was one of the first rural, independent family medicine practices to invest in interactive patient technology. As a member of the North Carolina Medical Society’s Health Information Exchange Task Force, she has been an ardent advocate for a statewide HIE and has testified on Capitol Hill about using these technologies.
• Guerrero-Tucker is a managing partner of her rural private practice, which offers full-spectrum family medicine services, and a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. Like many other physicians across the country, Guerrero-Tucker’s first foray into telehealth occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Webinar participants also will get an in-depth look at the AAFP’s new Telehealth Toolkit, a free resource that was developed in partnership with Manett Health.

The webinar is especially timely, Waldren told AAFP News last month, given that the pandemic has sparked widespread technological innovation and investment.

“All evidence points us to a future in family medicine which has virtual care as an important component of delivering care,” he said. “Members need to be thinking how they will incorporate telehealth in their practice as we emerge from this current pandemic.

“I am confident that health care will not be going back to pre-pandemic levels of low telehealth.”

The webinar is supported, in part, by a grant from Takeda Pharmaceuticals U.S.A. Inc.