Interview with April Maa, MD
Why did you feel that it was important to write Ocular Telehealth, 1st Edition? What does your publication add to the field?
Telehealth, especially after the pandemic, is now an indispensable tool to deliver healthcare to patients. There are not a lot of good resources about ocular telehealth out there, but since the pandemic, many people have been innovating and learning new ways to deliver care. This resource provides the field with a comprehensive guide to ocular telehealth, including specific use cases, and addresses practical aspects of starting your own telehealth program, including billing/coding, legal/ethical considerations, implementation, and technology.
What is the most exciting aspect of Ocular Telehealth? What chapter or topic covered are you most excited about?
I think the most exciting aspect of our new publication are the topics that deal with the logistics of setting up a telehealth program – and that includes implementation, billing, and legal issues. Ultimately, we want eye providers to do more telehealth, to learn to use this robust tool to deliver care to patients and so the chapters that are most important when “rubber meets the road” so to speak, are the most exciting. Additional chapters highlighting the future of telemedicine – artificial intelligence – are also very exciting because these new innovations are just around the corner from reality.
Who will find the greatest value from this book and why?
I believe eye care providers interested in starting a telehealth practice will find the greatest value from this book because it is exactly what the title states: a practical guide.
What new ideas, practices, or procedures do you hope your readers take away from Ocular Telehealth?
I hope that readers will finish this book and think, “Yes! I can do telehealth too!”. I hope that they will read this book and figure out how they, too, can integrate telehealth into their practice and adopt some of the use cases, perhaps modified for their situation.
What problem do you hope the future generation of your specialty will be able to solve?
I hope that my specialty one day will find a way to detect ocular disease before it becomes a problem. I also hope that eyecare providers will be able to take care of patients more efficiently, ensuring that all patients will have quality access to vision care without having to wait too long for treatment and that, ultimately, we can prevent blindness.
Is there anything else about the book you’d like to say?
None of this would be possible without our amazing telehealth team. So I’d like to reiterate what I stated in the dedication and give special recognition to our ophthalmology technicians who often serve as our “eyes and ears”, as well as acknowledge my fellow colleagues, especially my co-authors, for their dedication and shared expertise in writing this book. Everyone is busy these days, so the fact that my co-authors took the time to write these chapters to benefit our greater profession says a lot about each individual and I am incredibly blessed and grateful to all of them. Without them, this book would not be reality.
About the Editor
April Maa, MD
I am the Tele-specialty Care Director with the Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN) 7 Clinical Resource Hub with the Veterans’ Healthcare Administration. I am an ophthalmologist by training, graduating from Baylor College of Medicine with my MD and subsequently completing my ophthalmology residency at University of Texas Southwestern. I joined Emory University School of Medicine and the VA upon completing my residency. I am very passionate about healthcare access and equity, probably stemming from my Canadian upbringing. I love serving Veterans, and in my current role as Tele-specialty Care Director and also the National Tele-Eye Co-Lead for the VA Office of Connected Care, I feel that I am doing a lot of good by preventing blindness in our patients through access via telehealth.
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