Respondent’s Capabilities / Telehealth services Please provide information from the Respondent about your use of telehealth medical care settings to facilitate the care of individuals at risk. Describe the process and types of professionals (e.g., psychiatrists, addiction medicine physicians, psychologists, social workers, nurse practitioners, mental health and/or substance use disorder counselors, etc.) who provided consultations in the past. Describe the clinical scope of your service in determining risk for suicide, alcohol use disorder, and opioid use disorder, and associated workflows (e.g., assessment, diagnosis, brief interventions such as safety planning, referral) of the consultation. If patients/customers are followed by your telehealth service after their ED visit, describe how this is done, and for how long. Describe whether your consultation service has working/active referral relationships with local community-based outpatient mental health and/or substance use disorder treatment specialty clinicians or office-based. If your telehealth service provides community crisis services, and/or works with local crisis services, describe if your efforts also work to divert patients/customers from the ED in the future. Describe the nature of the consultation, such as provider-to-provider consultation; and/or direct contact between the consultant and the patient/customer. Information on the types of practices delivered by telehealth consultation, such as screening, evaluation, triage, intervention, disposition. Include information on whether the telehealth consultation service has been evaluated, and if so, what outcomes (e.g., repeat ED visits; hospitalization; other health care utilization; deaths) were examined, and over what period of time. Describe your process that would encourage 9-1-1 callers to access your providers/network for low acuity or behavioral calls by method(s) outside of the 9-1-1 system. Describe practices related to accreditation (e.g., Joint Commission) when using telehealth health consultation (e.g., practices recoded appropriately; privacy risks minimized; and credentialing, privileging, and verifying qualifications), and how those were addressed. Describe standards applicable to the telehealth industry, and how you assure compliance. Please provide Information on the types of technologies used for telehealth consultation (e.g., close circuit video; telephone; app-based; asynchronous consultations, etc.). Describe any efforts to insure cultural sensitivity and linguistic needs. Describe the staffing model and contingencies that would be used to assure 24 hour-a-day coverage, 365 days a year. Describe triage protocols, triggers, and the conceptual internal processes to reroute at-risk patients back into the 9-1-1 system for emergency dispatch as appropriate. Describe options for arranging ambulance transportation for low acuity patients who, after nurse screening, are determined to require transport to an Emergency Department but are not considered to be time sensitive. Describe process for recognition and review of sentinel events, unexpected outcomes, or violations of safety. Describe after-event mitigation practices. Description of Technical Design The Respondent should provide information about overall system design including, as applicable, the following: Hardware Requirements and Specifications Operating system/software environment Physical security features Detailed network requirements and protocols Data Security protocols Database environment and storage Description of the user interface, including browser-based screens for all functions of the system Description of the installation process Description of application security and auditing features Detailed interface requirements
