Recommendations to Enhance Telemedicine in Nursing Homes in the Age of COVID-19

Nursing homes (NHs) have been at the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic.1,2 Despite representing <1% of the US population, NH residents account for nearly 33% of all COVID-19 deaths.3 The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services implemented sweeping telemedicine regulatory relief in an effort to reduce COVID-19 spread in NHs. Telemedicine activity in US NHs has expanded dramatically4 but has not been without its challenges. Herein, we report 12 recommendations to enhance and sustain telemedicine (Table 1) from a telemedicine adoption study, certified as quality improvement by the UW-Madison Health Sciences IRB.