2020-12-15 OMA Agenda - Board of Trustees

Introduction Telehealth can be defined as the use of electronic information and telecommunications to facilitate patient-clinician interactivity towards the goal of safe and effective patient evaluation and delivery of health-related services beyond the traditional clinician “office visit.” Emergence of telehealth presents ethical, legal, and social challenges, as well as opportunities to improve the quality of healthcare. (1) Advantages of telehealth in general include convenience to patients, cost-effectiveness, and extended access to specialty services. Challenges to telehealth include lack of universal availability of required technologies, security of patient data, and limitations in performing some components of the traditional physical exam. (2) While telehealth has been utilized for decades, (3) the use of telehealth has substantially increased since emergence of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in early 2020, (4) which is a viral infection that increases morbidity and mortality among patients with obesity. (5) At the time of this writing, it is unclear how long, and how severe the COVID-19 pandemic will persist. Clinicians may benefit from a practical overview of telehealth applicable to obesity care, from the perspective of clinicians representing a spectrum of diverse backgrounds in their clinical practice utilization of telehealth in the management of patients with obesity.

What is the Obesity Medicine Association (OMA) “ADAPT” Telehealth Obesity Management Model?

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