Guidelines for Telehealth Practitioners

1. The RMP(Registered Medical Practitioner)/ Clinician should regularly log in to the CureAlife Healthtech website and stay updated on the appointments made by the patients at the site.

2. The RMP/CLINICIAN should make sure that he/she is available for all the online appointments well in time.

3. While initiating a consultation, the RMP/CLINICIAN must be polite and warm to the patient.

4. The RMP/CLINICIAN shall exercise his/her professional judgment to decide appropriateness of telemedicine consultation in a given situation against in-person consultation.

5. Within the intrinsic limits of telemedicine, the RMP/CLINICIAN shall uphold the same standard of care as in an in-person consultation.

6. An RMP/CLINICIAN shall verify and confirm patient’s identity by name, age (seeking age proof),address, email ID, phone number, registered ID or any other identification as may be deemed to be appropriate and must ensure that a patient is able to verify the credentials and contact details of the RMP/CLINICIAN.

7. In case of a minor patient, tele consultation is permissible only if the minor is consulting along-with an adult whose identity has been ascertained.

8. Patient consent is mandatory for any telemedicine consultation. The consent can be Implied i.e. if the patient initiates the telemedicine consultation, or Explicit where patient consent is recorded in the form of an email, text or audio/video message.

9. An RMP/CLINICIAN would use his/her professional discretion to gather the type and extent of patient information (history/examination findings/Investigation reports/past records etc.) required to be able to exercise proper clinical judgement. RMP/CLINICIAN can request for additional information from the patient.

10. The RMP/CLINICIAN should elicit and record a detailed history from the patient including past history, h/o common ailments, any allergies if any and a complete and detailed history of the current illness.

11. If the condition can be appropriately managed via telemedicine, the RMP/CLINICIAN may proceed with a professional judgement to provide health education; counseling or prescribe medicines.

12. Prescribing medications, via telemedicine consultation entails the same professional accountability as in-person consult. Prescribing Medicines without an appropriate diagnosis/provisional diagnosis will amount to a professional misconduct.

13. The RMP/CLINICIAN shall protect patient privacy and confidentiality and handle and transfer such personal information maintaining utmost privacy. RMP/CLINICIAN will not be held responsible for breach of confidentiality due to compromise by a technology breach or by a person other than RMP/CLINICIAN.

14. It is incumbent on RMP/CLINICIAN to maintain log or record of Telemedicine interaction (e.g. Phone logs, email records, chat/ text record, video interaction logs etc.), utilized in the telemedicine consultation and prescription records; as required for in-person consultations with the help of CureAlife software.

15. RMP/CLINICIAN may charge an appropriate fee as he/she has agreed upon with CureAlife Healthtech for the Telemedicine consultation provided and should also give a receipt/invoice for the fee charged.

16. It is expected that the RMP/CLINICIAN will keep a record of people who were present during the tele-consultation in the Comment section of the software along with a brief description of the consultation.