What is the Telehealth Readiness Assessment Tool?

The Telehealth Readiness Assessment (TRA) tool allows small physician practices to determine their readiness for implementing or scaling up a telehealth project. The tool also provides guidance and resources to improve readiness in key areas.

About the Telehealth Readiness Assessment Tool

As a result of lessons learned from telehealth demonstration projects and discussions with telehealth leaders in Maryland, a need was identified for an assessment tool to help practices understand barriers, facilitators, patient and environmental factors associated with telehealth readiness. To address this need, the Maryland Health Care Commission (MHCC) collaborated with RTI International to develop the Telehealth Readiness Assessment (TRA) tool.

In February, 2018, the TRA tool development project was initiated. TRA tool content is founded in literature and a comprehensive environmental scan of existing resources and information. The literature review and environmental scan identified more than 150 references including guidelines, best practices, and other information applicable to telehealth implementation in small physician practices. TRA tool content was also reviewed and field tested with key stakeholder groups, including the Maryland Telehealth Alliance and Maryland Medicaid, and 20 small physician practices in Maryland, including those that had and those that had not implemented telehealth. Field testing consisted of cognitive interviews to ensure that the TRA tool content is understandable, engaging, relevant, and appropriate for the intended audience.

About the MHCC

The MHCC is an independent regulatory agency whose mission is to plan for health system needs, promote informed decision-making, increase accountability, and improve access in a rapidly changing health care environment by providing timely and accurate information on availability, cost, and quality of services to policy makers, purchasers, providers and the public. The MHCC is responsible for advancing health information technology statewide and fostering innovation in a way that balances the need for information sharing with the need for strong privacy and security policies.