[...]... enhancing mental health service delivery It is incumbent upon mental health professionals, in our manyfold roles as researchers, educators, administrators, policymakers, and clinicians, to devise and implement programs that will expand quality and accessibility of health care services to all sectors of society Particularly in rural areas, or designated health professional shortage areas, we should be attuned... antikickback statutes; Stewart, 2000), regulation in this area is in its infancy The Center For Medicare and Medicaid Services Health Care Financing Agency regulations pertaining to the reimbursement of telehealth services in authorized rural areas are developmental (Stewart, 2000), and the ability of mental health providers to submit for Medicare reimbursement is unsettled Will managed care act as a stimulus... expectation of candor and openness in many Western countries may not be matched in others Legal, regulatory, and transnational quality assurance mechanisms have yet to be implemented in standardized ways, and the transnational measurement of cost efficacy and outcomes transnationally is problematic (Lacroix, 1999) Guilds and Professional Associations The financial component of regulations affecting the practice... “core mental health disciplines are appropriately recognized under the Title VII (health professions training and service delivery) legislation, as well as in Medicare and Medicaid The professional associations representing psychologists, advance practice nursing, clinical social workers, marriage and family therapists, physicians’ assistants, and clinical pharmacists have each become increasingly... the easy accessibility of medical information has affected the patient–provider relationship perhaps more than any other single factor in recent years Patients, armed with knowledge that had not long ago been easily available only to highly educated professionals, are questioning diagnoses, treatments, and outcomes to a far greater extent than ever before In addition, the volume of information and the... Health Online (ISMHO), he was also a coleader of the first and longest-running online clinical case study group a multidisciplinary, international group of mental health professionals Aside from peer supervision activities online, he has supervised both clinical and school psychology interns for several New York area graduate programs and has published numerous articles in both print journals and on his award-winning... example, will clearly be deemed in the very near future to be essential health services that are relevant to a wide range of human conditions and disease entities A data-driven orientation and decision-making style, which is already fundamental to the behavioral sciences, will become increasingly incorporated into both clinical service delivery and health care systems planning Accountability, regardless... noted that most cost efficacy studies have been carried out in European Union countries and generally do not address mental health care Few cost comparison studies are available for mental health services An Alberta, Canada study found the breakeven point for use of teleprovision of psychiatric services to be over 300 teleconsultations per annum; however, this was considerably lower when distance media were... technologically in the intervening years, making telehealth an increasingly attractive economic option Evidence supporting the efficacy, as well as the cost-effectiveness, of telehealth and other distance modalities is slowly accruing, and distance mental health service provision, though largely in the form of telepsychiatry, is one of the most popular applications of telehealth today But telehealth applications... establish a national policy advisory body that will research, develop and publish national scopes of practice and continuing competency standards for state legislatures to implement The national policy advisory board should develop standards, including model legislative language, for uniform scopes of practice authority for the health professions These standards and models would Foreword xxxi be based . class="bi x0 y0 w0 h0" alt="" Online Counseling: A Handbook for Mental Health Professionals This Page Intentionally Left Blank Online Counseling: A Handbook for. (http://www.eGetgoing.org) Morgan T. Sammons, Ph.D., is head of the Mental Health Department at the Naval Medical Clinic, U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland; a commander in