American College of Emergency Physicians
ACEP Telehealth Section Spring Newsletter
Literature in Emergency Telehealth: Key Advances and Practice Implications
Important Dates/Upcoming Events
From the Chair
Dear ACEP Emergency Telehealth Section Members,
As we move deeper into 2026, I continue to be inspired by the energy, creativity, and commitment within our Emergency Telehealth community. Telemedicine has the potential to become a core component of modern acute unscheduled care. Every month, our section members are shaping how emergency physicians deliver care, expand access, and innovate within their own systems. It’s a privilege to help support and amplify that work.
Over the past several months, both ACEP and our section have been busy. Most recently, we witnessed our section liaisons, Ryan McBride and Annalane Miller, flex their legislative advocacy muscles. At the recent Leadership and Advocacy Conference (LAC26), emergency physicians from across the country met with lawmakers to address some of the most pressing challenges facing our specialty. This year’s advocacy priorities were not specific to telehealth, but important to all emergency physicians and our patients. We called on Congress to support the ABC-ED Act to address the boarding crisis, advance legislation to protect the emergency medicine
workforce—including banning noncompetes, strengthening protections against workplace violence, and ensuring due process—and to preserve Medicare’s promise by stabilizing physician reimbursement. These issues directly impact our ability to deliver timely, high quality emergency care, whether in person or virtually. If you’ve never attended LAC, I encourage you to consider joining us next year. It’s energizing, impactful, and a powerful reminder of what our collective voice can accomplish.
Our section meetings have also been rich with innovation and expertise. In April, Dr. Michael Gonzalez shared insights from Houston’s groundbreaking ETHAN (Emergency Telehealth and Navigation) program—one of the most mature and successful telehealthEMS integration models in the country. In May, Dr. Maya Yiadom from Stanford will discuss the Virtual Visit Track, a forward-looking approach to streamlining emergency care through virtual pathways. And later this summer, Dr. Nicolas Kahl from UC San Diego will present his work on telehealth followup visits and their impact on 30-day hospitalizations, with the final date to be confirmed for July or August. These sessions are open to all section members and highlight the
breadth of innovation happening across emergency telehealth and the value of learning from one another. If you are interested in speaking at a future section meeting, please let Dr. Marc Bartman, our section’s chair-elect, or me know.
Behind the scenes, our executive committee has been highlighting several important opportunities. ACEP members are encouraged to participate in committees with several sections relevant to those interested in telehealth, such as the Health IT (HIT), Reimbursement, State Legislation, Artificial Intelligence, Disaster Medicine, and EMS Committees. Committee interest forms are due May 15th, and we encourage anyone passionate about telehealth to get involved. We are also approaching our section officer elections, with nominations for vice chair, secretary, counselor, and newsletter editor due by August 1. If you’ve ever considered stepping into a leadership role, this is a wonderful opportunity to help shape the future of our section.
Our Newsletter editors, Dr. Lisa Zhao and Dr. Junaid Razzak, are also working hard at preparing the next issue of our section newsletter. Thank you to everyone who has contributed articles, literature reviews, and updates. If you have ideas for future content, we would love to hear from you.
With the ACEP council taking place alongside the annual ACEP meeting this October, members are creating council resolutions to provide ACEP with direction on member priorities for the year ahead. Our section Councilor and alternate councilor, Dr. Iyesatta Emeli and Dr. Kathy Li, are monitoring resolutions related to Telehealth. If you or your ACEP chapter is submitting a telehealth-related resolution, please notify our councilors so they can help you achieve aligned goals.
Finally, I want to express my appreciation for the dedication and enthusiasm each of you bring to this section. Whether you are leading a telehealth program, researching new models of care, advocating for policy change, or simply exploring how telehealth can enhance your practice, you are helping move our specialty forward. Our section is strongest when our members are engaged, sharing ideas, and supporting one another. I hope you’ll join us at upcoming meetings, consider presenting your work, and encourage colleagues to become part of our growing community.
Thank you for being the most important part of the ACEP Emergency Telehealth Section. I look forward to the months ahead and to continuing this work together.
Warm reards,
Michael Baker, MD, FACEP
Chair, ACEP Emergency Telehealth Section
Perspectives From The Field
Introduction to Hospital At Home
Dr. Alex Fortenko
Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine
Weill Cornell Medical College
The Hospital at Home (HaH) model represents a significant advancement in acute care delivery, enabling appropriately selected patients to receive hospital-level services safely in their homes. Initially expanded under federal waivers during the COVID-19 public health emergency, HaH integrates telehealth, remote monitoring, in-home clinical services, and multidisciplinary coordination to deliver inpatient-level care beyond the traditional hospital setting. Federal legislation has extended the Acute Hospital Care at Home waiver through December 31, 2030, providing regulatory stability and reinforcing national commitment to this model. Adoption continues to expand, with more than 400 hospitals across 39 states operating under approved waivers, underscoring broad acceptance of home-based acute care as a durable component of modern healthcare delivery.
National outcomes data consistently validate the model’s safety and effectiveness. Across programs, appropriately selected patients experience outcomes comparable to, and in some cases better than, traditional inpatient hospitalization. Reported benefits include reductions in hospital-acquired conditions, lower rates of delirium, decreased readmissions, and strong overall safety performance. Patient and caregiver satisfaction frequently exceeds that of brick-and-mortar hospitalization, with many patients citing comfort, autonomy, and more personalized engagement with care teams as meaningful advantages. Together, these findings position Hospital at Home as both a patient-centered innovation and a strategic response to ongoing hospital capacity pressures.
At New York-Presbyterian (NYP), our Hospital at Home program, launched in November 2025 as a collaborative partnership between Columbia University Irving Medical Center and Weill Cornell Medicine, was designed with emergency medicine leadership at its core. The NYP program relies heavily on involvement by the Emergency Departments at both institutions. ED residents, PAs/NPs and Attendings all play a central role in identifying and directly enrolling eligible patients from the ED, creating a streamlined ED-to-home admission pathway. In partnership with informatics and IT services teams, targeted enhancements to the ED track-board support real-time identification of appropriate candidates within existing workflows.
These EDs were uniquely positioned to advance this model, having long leveraged virtual care to bridge post-ED gaps through an established ED-to–Virtual Urgent Care follow-up program and robust community tele-paramedicine initiatives. This foundation has enabled confident, rapid adoption of ED-based HaH enrollment, diverting appropriate patients from inpatient boarding and hallway care while safely transitioning them home for hospital-level treatment. In doing so, emergency medicine is not only alleviating capacity constraints but actively redefining admission as a patient-centered, home-based pathway. Successful HaH initiatives must have engagement from ED teams to ensure a sustainable, robust and successful programs.
Literature in Emergency Telehealth: Key Advances and Practice Implications
Recent emergency telehealth literature continues to reinforce the role of virtual acute care as a core component of emergency medicine operations rather than a temporary pandemic-era solution. In Acute Care Use and Mortality by Tele-Emergency Care Use, researchers found that VHA Tele-Emergency Care may reduce unnecessary emergency department utilization while maintaining acceptable safety outcomes, supporting broader adoption of tele-emergency care and follow-up models. Similarly, The Role of Telemedicine in Emergency Department Overcrowding reviewed how virtual triage, remote consultation, and low-acuity diversion strategies can improve emergency department throughput and resource allocation during periods of crowding. The commentary Emergency Care Outside of the Four Walls of the Emergency Department, highlights that tele-emergency pathways can safely reduce unnecessary ED utilization while improving patient access and post-discharge continuity of care.
Another major theme in the recent literature is the expansion of emergency telehealth into EMS and prehospital medicine. Implementation of Telemedicine for Patients Referred to Emergency Medical Services evaluated telemedicine-supported EMS referral workflows and demonstrated how remote physician assessment may reduce unnecessary ambulance transports while improving triage decision-making. This reflects a broader movement toward integrating emergency physicians into virtual prehospital care pathways as health systems seek to address ED overcrowding, workforce shortages, and rising EMS demand. Tele-medicine was also shown to be non-inferior to in-person follow-up after Emergency Department visits in Telemedicine Use and Outcomes Following Discharge from the Emergency Department. The study evaluated telemedicine-based follow-up care after emergency department discharge and examined utilization patterns and clinical outcomes, reinforcing growing interest in virtual transition-of-care programs as a strategy to improve continuity and potentially reduce repeat ED utilization
Recent publications also highlight how emergency telehealth is increasingly being used to extend emergency medicine beyond the walls of the emergency department itself. Telehealth Emergency Department Transition-of-Care Program described the implementation of virtual post-discharge follow-up programs aimed at reducing bounce-backs and improving continuity of care after ED discharge.
Important Dates/Upcoming Events
June 9, 2026
ACEP Telehealth Section Meeting
Occurs the Second Tuesday of Every month from 2:00pm-3:00pm EST
August 1st
2026-2028 Nominations for ACEP Telehealth Section Officers
The Telehealth Section is seeking nominations for Section Officers for the 2026-2028 term. If you are interested in nominating yourself or others for the below officer positions, please submit your statement via this link. Terms are generally two years in length (with the exception of the Chair-Elect position) and begin at the conclusion of the Annual Scientific Assembly, where elections are held during the Section Meeting. Additional information regarding officer responsibilities can be found in the ACEP Section Manual and the Telehealth Section’s Operational Guidelines. A high-level summary of each role is provided below:
- Chair-Elect - Supports the Chair while preparing to assume future leadership of the Section by helping to coordinate projects, committees, and Section initiatives. The Chair-Elect serves as the Chair in his or her absence.
- Chair - (Appointed) Leads the overall direction and operations of the Emergency Telehealth Section, including strategic initiatives, meetings, committee oversight, and coordination with ACEP leadership. The Chair is responsible for providing updates about the section’s achievements and activities by providing annual summaries at the ACEP Board of Directors meeting and ad-hoc informational summaries. The Chair, amongst other duties, serves as a voting member of related College committees.
- Immediate-Past Chair - (Appointed) At the end of the Chair’s term, he/she will transition to the Immediate-Past Chair and remains as an officer of the section by assisting the chair in their duties, serving as Chair of the Section Nominating Committee and providing continuity to leadership.
- Secretary - Manages Section administration and communications, including meeting minutes, member notices, elections, and organizational records. Helps maintain operational continuity and member engagement throughout the year.
- Councilor - Represents the Emergency Telehealth Section within ACEP’s broader governance and policy structure. Advocates for emergency telehealth priorities through the ACEP Council and helps communicate policy developments back to Section members.
- Newsletter Editor - Serves as editor of the section newsletter, including requesting and obtaining content and disseminating it to the section no less than twice a year.
