American Medical Association supports telehealth in the US, could it work in Oman?

American Medical Association supports telehealth in the US, could it work in Oman?

In April, private hospitals in the Sultanate were weighing the benefits of offering telemedicine services to overcome the impact of COVID-19. Some healthcare providers began ramping up their telehealth and telemedicine capabilities. However, new ways to deliver health care can face some hesitancy from some patients and doctors, and fully adapting a national health care system to new technologies and processes brings new challenges. Questions about the costs, administration and related coding and billing needed to be understood. "Even before COVID-19, there was some hesitancy adopting telehealth services in the region, said Dr Osama Elhassan, co-founder and the vice-chair of Emirates Health Informatics Society and Health Informatics Specialist at Dubai Health Authority. "We had to get the right digital frameworks in place so that we can ensure the quality of telehealth platforms, the flow of reimbursement processes, and also address privacy and security when using those platforms." To help overcome these challenges, the American Medical Association (AMA) aligned Current Procedural Terminology (CPT®), a unique medical terminology that describes services and procedures used to care for patients, to support the delivery of procedures across care settings. The CPT code set currently includes 70 telehealth-related codes and content describing comprehensive telehealth delivery