Telehealth Medicine Use in the Adult Congenital Cardiology Practice – How to Incorporate Telehealth into Your Clinical Practice During These Difficult Times

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives in ways that we did not envisage just over a month ago. At the time of writing, over 170,000 people have lost their lives worldwide and 4.5 billion people are under quarantine to slow the pandemic.1 In addition to the acute burden COVID-19 is placing on our emergency rooms and intensive care units, we are also having to adapt our outpatient clinical practice to delay any non-urgent in-person visits in an attempt to limit exposure to patients and providers. As health care providers we find ourselves rapidly transitioning from the normal clinical visit in person to telephone or telehealth visits when appropriate. How do we do this effectively? What tips and tricks are there to performing a telehealth visit well? And with this increasing comfort and experience with telehealth, are we recognizing there may be an increased role for telehealth which outlives this pandemic?