INTRODUCTION
Physicians have a variety of choices as they transition their practices from in-person to completely or partially virtual practices. In this article, we shall investigate the Illuminate Health Platform, an excellent basis for a telemedicine practice.
THE ILLUMINATE HEALTH PLATFORM - WHAT IS IT?
An excellent place to start when seeking information about the Illuminate Health Platform for telemedicine is the Frequently Asked Questions area. Physicians will find answers to questions such as:
· How to sign up with the platform and details of the on-boarding process.
· Do physicians need to be technology experts in using the system?
· How do physicians get paid?
· Is malpractice insurance included?
· What medications physicians a physician can prescribe
· Does Illuminate work with individual practices of group practices?
· How are physician information and patient information recorded and stored?
· How do patients find and connect with physicians?
· How much time physicians will need to commit?
· Are physicians offered any training on how to use the system?
The FAQs address most of the critical questions that physicians may want to ask about the Illuminate Health telemedicine platform.
THE ILLUMINATE HEALTH PLATFORM
DETAILS.
Let us now cover a few essential details of the Illuminate Health telemedicine platform. Smartphone Apps are the basis for the Illuminate Health telemedicine platform. There are physician apps available for both iOS and Android phones. There are separate apps for iOS and Android that patients use to sign up to connect with a physician on the Illuminate Health telemedicine platform.
Physician sign-up
After downloading the App, the physician must provide detailed personal and professional information including verification of a State Medical License, current DEA and NPI number, and details of the medical school attended, internships, and residencies completed and board certification. To be eligible to join Illuminate Health, physicians must hold a valid State License, be board-certified, and have a least one year of post-residency medical practice. Illuminate will then verify the physician’s credentials and complete the onboarding process.
How the Illuminate App works
Illuminate Health provides training for physicians. Physicians may encourage their patients to obtain and use the App for interactions. Physicians may also make themselves available during convenient time-slots when new patients may access them for virtual contacts, a way for physicians to expand their practices. The following photos show the Illuminate Health App in use for a virtual patient meeting.
Malpractice Coverage
Malpractice insurance is provided for all activities and interactions with patients on the Illuminate platform. Physicians should, however, discuss their planned functioning on the Illuminate site with their malpractice carriers. It seems unlikely that physicians will conduct their entire practices on Illuminate so that additional malpractice coverage will be required. It is essential to understand how the coverage provided by Illuminate and personal coverage might or might not interact.
How physician and patient information is protected?
The Illuminate platform recognizes the importance of protecting both the physician’s and the patient’s information. The system uses industrial HIPAA-compliant servers with content protection secured using end-to-end 256 Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) protocol. Access to information is granted via a one-time-key from a patient to a provider when a visit is scheduled. The system performs regular and randomized audits to ensure data integrity. Finally, if either a physician or a patient lose their devices, the records can be remotely wiped from their device memories.
CONCLUSIONS
The Illuminate App for telemedicine eliminates the many concerns that physicians may have in making the transition from an in-person to a virtual medical practice. Signing up is simple, and the App is easy to use for both physicians and patients. Consumer platforms like Zoom, Facetime, and Whatsapp are attractive because physicians can use them immediately for telemedicine visits without any formal sign-up. Unfortunately, these consumer platforms do not contain any of the critical safeguards for concerns such as patient privacy and confidentiality, malpractice coverage, patient information storage, and documentation of virtual patient encounters, among other essential considerations.
There are now numerous commercial platforms available to physicians as the basis for significant telemedicine practice. The Illuminate Health platform is an excellent one for physicians to consider. It offers ease of use for both physicians and patients and provides all of the necessary safeguards for successful telemedicine practice. Why not try it?
Robert Young, M.D.
