Future of Health

Optimizing and sustaining telehealth and other new technologies used in your practice is essential to support patient care. This collection of AMA STEPS Forward^® practice innovation strategies offers proven approaches to provide digitally enabled care.

• Playbooks: Collections of related interventions
  • Digital Health Implementation Playbook Series Key steps, best practices and resources to accelerate the adoption of digital health innovations that extend care beyond the exam room.
  • Taming the EHR Playbook Your EHR system may feel like an unfixable problem. Learn strategies to maximize team-based care, throw out unnecessary rules, and optimize proficiency with EHR technology. 
• Podcasts
  • Telemedicine Is a Team Effort Kevin Hopkins, MD, a senior physician advisor at the AMA, explains the importance of pivoting from a “physician-does-it-all” mentality and embracing team-based care.
  • Sharing Clinical Notes With Patients Understand the recent federal mandate for open notes and how clinicians, patients and caregivers can make the most of them.
  • Improve Practice Efficiency With EHR Quick Wins Learn about “quick-win” systemic adjustments, such as badge logins and synchronized refills, with Nigel Girgrah, MD, chief wellness officer at Ochsner Health in New Orleans.
  • Taming the EHR Medical practices may have more control than originally thought. Tame your EHR to get back to meaningful work.
  • Small Interventions Matter Alfred Atanda Jr., MD, director of clinician well-being at Nemours Children’s Health in Florida, describes how implementing small changes can lead to big returns.
  • Electronic Health Record Optimization Daniel Dunham, MD, MPH, FACP, chairman of medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, explains how time-saving tricks, such as eliminating unnecessary clicks, can help save hundreds of hours in the EHR.
• Webinars
  • Future of Health Immersion Program A comprehensive curriculum of webinars, learning sessions and virtual discussions navigating the world of digitally-enabled care alongside peers nationwide.
  • Leveraging E-consults in Practice Alfred Atanda Jr., MD, director of clinician well-being at Nemours Children’s Health in Florida, explains how e-consults are being used in practice and how they can improve patient experiences and reduce unnecessary health care services.
  • Enhancing Integrated Behavioral Health Care with Digital Therapeutics Learn how digital therapeutic (DTx) solutions can be leveraged by PCPs to improve care coordination and treatment for their patients, as well as advance the overall value and impact of BHI for their practices.
  • Digitally Enabled Care for Women’s Health Understand the current state of women’s health and maternal health and how digitally enabled care is promoting and enhancing women’s well-being.
  • Telehealth With an Equity Lens Implement new health care technologies in an equitable, inclusive way, focusing on both the impact to marginalized and minoritized patients and the clinicians and systems that care for them.
  • Adopting OpenNotes Catherine DesRoches, DrPH, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, describes common clinician concerns and some best practices for sharing clinical notes with patients.
  • Closing the Digital Health Disconnect: A Blueprint for Optimizing Digitally Enabled Care Understand the chasm between the theoretical potential that digitally enabled care models promise and the reality of “parallel” care that predominates today.
  • Telehealth for Private Practice Support for private practices in continuing to leverage telehealth and virtual care to provide patient care.
  • 2022 Telehealth Retrospective and 2023 Predictions A panel of industry leaders examines telehealth and virtual care market trends and predictions of what’s to come in 2023.
  • Demonstrating the Value of Virtual Care Real-world examples of how virtual care has impacted clinical outcomes, quality, safety; access to care; patient, family and caregiver experience; clinician experience; financial and operational; and health equity.
  • Mind the Gaps: Digital Health Issues and Opportunities Three leaders from the Mayo Clinic describe the importance of collaboration and coordination to support technology implementation, workflow integration and outcomes evaluation.
  • Accelerating and Enhancing Behavioral Health Integration through Digitally Enabled Care Listen to the opportunities and challenges from accelerating BHI through digitally enabled care and supporting the widespread adoption of sustainable BHI.
  • Telehealth Vendor Evaluation, Selection, and Contracting Stacy Lloyd, MPH, director of digital health and operations, American Medical Association, explains some of the key considerations for evaluating, selecting and contracting with new vendors for telehealth services.
  • Telehealth and Team-based Care – Navigating Potential Pitfalls Kevin Hopkins, MD, senior physician advisor at the AMA, explains the shift to telemedicine and navigating some of the pain points a practice might encounter.
  • Telehealth and Team-based Care – Engage Support Staff James Jerzak, MD, physician lead of team-based care at Bellin Health in Green Bay, Wisconsin, talks about how to gather the support to leverage team-based care models in telehealth.
  • Healthcare Technology and the Human Connection Hear about how to maintain empathy and human “touch” within a digital environment, enhancing experiences and improving outcomes and access.
  • Measuring the Value of Virtual Care Vimal Mishra, MD, director of Digital Health at AMA, outlines the research and framework for measuring the value of virtual care across different practices, payment models, virtual care modalities and clinical conditions.
  • A Review of Telehealth Trends: Informing the Future of Virtual Care Recent research helps physicians identify opportunities to optimize telehealth and virtual care for enhanced impact.
  • Clinical Case Study: Telehealth for Primary Care A panel of leaders in primary care describe techniques for delivering care via telehealth and remote patient monitoring.
• Toolkits: How-to guides for implementation
  • EHR Inbox Management 0.25 Credit CME Learn how preventing unnecessary messages, using standard workflows and adding message filters can help your team tame your EHR inbox.
  • Telehealth and Team-Based Care Improve patient care and patient access and increase the care team’s engagement during virtual visits.
  • Patient Portal Optimization Empower patients to communicate quickly with the care team and participate as partners in their health care.
  • Electronic Health Record Optimization By minimizing the time spent on data entry and optimizing workflows, your practice can ease the transition from paper to electronic health records.
  • Telehealth Integration and Optimization Toolkit Practical steps for virtual health care delivery, from choosing the best telehealth platform to developing team-based workflows.
  • Patient Care Registries Appropriate training and carefully designed practice workflows can help proactively manage chronic conditions.
  • Sharing Clinical Notes with Patients Understand the recent federal mandate for open notes and how clinicians, patients and caregivers can make the most of them.
  • Team Documentation 0.75 Credit CME Learn to improve efficiency with a team EHR documentation process.
  • Electronic Health Record (EHR) Implementation By minimizing the time spent on data entry and optimizing workflows, your practice can ease the transition from paper to electronic health records.
  • Electronic Health Record (EHR) Software Selection and Purchase Assess which EHR software is right for you, based on your practice needs, overall cost and ease of integration.
  • Project ECHO^® (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) Connect with expert medical specialists to build capacity in primary care and increase your patients’ access to care.
• Success Stories: Real-world examples
  • Quick Pivot to Telemedicine in Primary Care Learn how ambulatory primary care at Cleveland Clinic quickly incorporated telemedicine in their practices, reaching 80% virtual visits within two months.
  • Robust Teledermetalogy Program Prepared Permanente for COVID-19 Telehealth Transformation A robust and well-oiled teledermatology program at The Permanente Medical Group facilitated an easy transition to system-wide telehealth care.
  • Read more Success Stories