A Primer on Telehealth
Robert Medhurst | BNat ND DNutr DRM DBM DHom
There’ s little doubt that telehealth has become a popular option for healthcare providers and their clients, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’ s becoming more popular as time goes on. Medicare data from 2022 1 showed that approximately 20 % of GP consultations were conducted using telehealth, and data provided by Professor Sandra Grace and Annie Gibbins in the Spring 2025 edition of the ATMS Journal 2 indicates that of the ATMS-accredited members surveyed, 21.2 % describe their typical practice setting as online or telehealth. If your primary modality is something other than acupuncture or bodywork, for which telehealth treatment may be unsuitable, and if you’ ve been considering offering telehealth as an option to clients or you’ re already providing it and want to dig a little deeper into it, what follows may give you some food for thought. It should be noted that what we currently know about telehealth as used by complementary and alternative medicine( CAM) providers is quite slim and as such this paper is informed by material associated with orthodox medicine as well as the author’ s own telehealth experiences with overseas clients.
What is telehealth?
Telehealth, also known as telemedicine, is essentially healthcare at a distance facilitated by telecommunications technology involving the transmission of images, voice or data between two or more sites. Phone or video are the most commonly used media here and both media types have their advantages and disadvantages, but in most cases the preference is for video, and a recent article published by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners( RACGP) 3 refers to government policy that indicates a preference for video over phone, primarily as a means of minimising some of the risks associated with telehealth, which are enlarged upon below.
Who are telehealth consults for?
While it may seem that every client is a suitable telehealth candidate, there are limitations that need to be considered.
The RACGP 3 advises its members to restrict telehealth consultations to clients who are already in an established clinical relationship with the provider, and have generally been the recipient of a face-toface healthcare service with the provider or within the provider’ s clinic, in the previous 12 months. But they suggest exemptions to this restriction for certain client categories such as children under the age of 12 months, homeless people, those isolating because of a potentially infectious disease, those in urgent need of care or those affected by a natural disaster.
The prominent Australian medical professional indemnity insurance provider, the Australian Medical Indemnity Protection Society( MIPS) 4, echoes the RACGP’ s guidance, suggesting that telehealth must only be offered if measures are in place for clients to have a face-to-face consultation when this is clinically necessary. It goes on to say that providers are encouraged to exercise clinical judgement to assess the risks of not conducting face-to-face consultations where clients may have high-risk potentially serious conditions, who are unable to self-monitor appropriately, where a physical / direct examination is pivotal to support clinical decision-making, where a client’ s ability to communicate effectively over the phone or through video is compromised, or where a support person is unavailable.
Before engaging with a client in a telehealth consultation, asking the following questions may be useful:
• Is it logical and safe to conduct the consultation for diagnosis and / or treatment without the client’ s physical presence?
• Will issues such as the client’ s age, impairment or disability limit the effectiveness of diagnosis or treatment?
• Is it possible to determine the severity or progress of the client’ s disease or disability without a physical examination?
• Is the provider literate enough with the technology inherent in the telehealth platform to be able to effectively deal with a technology issue or failure should it arise?
• Does the client have access to a space from which to engage in telehealth where privacy and security are not at risk?
AJNM | Summer 2025 | 227