Miss the Twitter Chat on Telehealth and Primary Care During COVID-19? Here’s How You Can Revisit It

On July 23, PCC joined many other leading organizations in the primary care community in an hour-long chat on Twitter about the role of telehealth in primary care during the coronavirus pandemic.

If you missed the conversation, you can read the saved Q&A on Twitter under the hashtag #PrimaryCareCovidChat. Or even if you were part of the chat, you may find a reading of the Q&A at your own pace is more beneficial, since the conversation was very fast-paced and included many answers to each of the seven questions that were posed. Even seasoned Twitter users may have had a hard time keeping up with the conversation! You don’t have to have a Twitter account/be on Twitter to read the conversation.

In addition to PCC, the hosts/participants included:

• PCC
• Mathematica
• The Larry A. Green Center
• Center for Consumer Engagement in Health Innovation
• Center for Connected Health Policy
• Patient Access Network Foundation
• Primary Care Development Corporation
• 3rd Conversation/X4Health
• Well Being Trust
• many other primary care organizations and leaders.

Participants offered many opinions and insights in their answers. Perhaps most beneficial in the reading of the Q&A after the event is discovering many resources that many of the participants provided in their answers - helpful articles and organizational programs and initiatives, for example.

The chat covered a range of topics. The questions, in order, are provided below as an “index” to the Q&A if you want to read only parts of the conversation or focus on particular topics. The questions are marked by tweets beginning with Q (Q1 for question 1, etc.), and answers are marked in tweets beginning with A (A1 for the answer to question 1, etc).

Questions:

• Q1 How has telehealth changed your experience as a primary care patient, provider, or payer?
• Q2 What would help primary care clinicians with telehealth implementation and sustainability?
• Q3 What steps can be taken to ensure that telehealth is equitable?
• Q4 How can telehealth policies support quality of care in a range of communities?
• Q5 What kind of payment reform would permanently support telehealth in primary care practices?
• Q6 How can we make telehealth appointments feel as real as in-person ones? What helps patients connect and practitioners develop “webside manner”?
• Q7 Telehealth is here to stay because _____________________.

In the chat's Q&A stream on Twitter, the conversation is in reverse chronological order - i.e., scroll down to get to the beginning of the chat.

Even though the live chat is over, you can still contribute to this conversation. Feel free to retweet or like any of past tweets or add your own response to the questions (a Twitter account/handle is required). Just be sure to include the chat’s hashtag (#PrimaryCareCovidChat) in your tweet so it gets added to the stream of answers.

The July 23 chat was the second Twitter chat held by this group of organizations working in primary care. The previous chat, held June 18, was titled Primary Care in the Time of COVID-19. That conversation is also saved under the same hashtag as the most recent chat and can be viewed on Twitter as well following the same instructions as above.