Telehealth Practice Standards With Emphasis on the United States: What Telerehabilitation Providers Need to Know

Telehealth has taken the spotlight with the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic, which rendered traditional, in-person health care visits potentially unsafe in the face of a highly communicable virus. Because many conditions can be adequately diagnosed and treated via telehealth, the use of this mechanism of health care delivery became desirable for telehealth providers and patients alike. Concurrently, a myriad of laws and regulations governing health care practice were relaxed in an attempt to make use of telehealth easier for telehealth providers and patients. Nonetheless, a patchwork of varying standards governing the practice of telehealth in the United States and across the globe is the norm, which makes practicing telehealth and telerehabilitation potentially confusing for the newly initiated.