The Telepsychiatry Advantage: Episode 7

The Ryan Haight Act: How to Safely Prescribe Controlled Substances in Telepsychiatry

Introduction and Context

Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Telepsychiatry Advantage. I’m your host, Dr. Edward Kaftarian, and I’m a psychiatrist and chairman and CEO of Orbit Health telepsychiatry, the longest running telemedicine company in the world. The goal of the Telepsychiatry Advantage is to give you practical tools. You need to practice telepsychiatry safely, effectively and confidently.

In today’s episode, we’re continuing our series on the Ryan Haight Act and prescribing controlled substances via telemedicine.

In our first two episodes, we talked about the history of the law and the current state of the law in 2026. Specifically, we are now in June 2026. Right now, we have a temporary DEA extension that gives us a clear ability to practice medicine with controlled substances via telepsychiatry, until December 31st, 2026, when the telemedicine cliff is going to happen.We talk more about that cliff in other episodes.

But today we’re leaving the legal books behind and we’re stepping directly into the virtual clinic. We’re looking at actual clinical skills you need to manage the risk of prescribing controlled substances via telepsychiatry.

How do you evaluate a patient for a controlled drug through a webcam? How do you spot a patient who might be impaired, or might be diverting their medications, or trying to get more of the medication than is clinically indicated? And how do you do all of this while maintaining rapport with the patient and having a trusted relationship with that person right in front of you on the screen?

A Quick Legal Reminder

A quick legal reminder I’m a doctor, not a lawyer, so I am not giving you legal advice. This podcast is for informational purposes only. And also so you need to know that the telemedicine laws, rules, regulations and policies, they change and so you need to stay on top of that.

You can do that by reviewing the podcast, but also by looking directly at the law. And the law can be found online. You also want to look at your state laws, not only the federal laws. And there are also sometimes local laws that can dictate how you practice medicine.

The Golden Rule: The Screen Doesn’t Lower the Bar

Let’s start with the most basic fundamental concept of the Ryan Haight Act. The law states that every prescription must be legitimate. It must be prescribed for a legitimate medical purpose by a qualified clinician, and this must be in the usual course of your professional practice. So that is one of the most basic things that’s going to keep you safe.

Is the medication legitimately prescribed? In plain English, this means that the video call is just a tool to see the patient, it’s not an excuse to cut corners. If you wouldn’t walk into a physical clinic, sit down with a brand new patient for ten minutes and hand them a heavy prescription for an ADHD stimulant without looking at a single medical record, you can’t do that over zoom. So think of it clinically. What would you do for the patient in person and try to do as much of that as you can while you are conducting the visit via telepsychiatry, and everything that you observe on that screen needs to help you answer one question: Does this information help me decide whether to safely start, continue, monitor or stop a controlled medication?

How to Spot Intoxication Through a Webcam

One of the biggest concerns that we have about telehealth is, are we able to see the signs that a patient is high or drunk? In other words, can we see if a patient is intoxicated? In person, the nose tells a lot. You can smell alcohol on their breath and on video, you don’t have that ability to smell. And so you have to train your eyes and ears to look for different clues.

• First, you need to know the difference between a bad internet connection and a brain that’s moving slowly. If a patient’s mouth moves and the sound takes a second to catch up, that’s just the Wi-Fi lag or an internet hiccup. But if your connection is perfect and you ask a simple question and it takes the patient 3 or 4 seconds of staring blankly before they process it and find an answer, that’s a lag, a cognitive lag, and that may be a sign that their brain is slowed down by either a substance or a mental health condition.So that’s a really important sign that I want you to pay attention to.

• Secondly, watch their eyes. You might not see tiny or dilated pupils on a standard webcam. So what you want to do is you want to zoom in and try to see if there pupil looks dilated or constricted. You can also see heavy, drooping eyelids. Look for what I call the micronod. That’s the quick moment where the patient’s chin dips toward their chest like this, and they suddenly snap their head back and open their eyes like they’re about to fall asleep, and they’re trying to hide the fact that they’re drifting off. So that’s also a clinical sign that the patient might be sedated and the sedation can come from medication, it comes from intoxication, t may have had a sleepless night or two. So this is a generally useful clinical sign that you can use to diagnose a patient.

• Third look at their physical coordination. How are they handling the smartphone or the laptop? Impaired patients often lose their coordination, especially if they’re drunk, like with alcohol and other drugs. If they’re holding the phone, are they constantly fumbling with it or are they moving the screen around? Are they dropping it, or are they letting the camera drift up to the ceiling without even realizing that you can no longer see their face? Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re intoxicated, but it could mean that they’re intoxicated. So you want to put that all together into your clinical evaluation.

• Finally, listen to the volume of their voice. Alcohol and drugs mess with the brain’s internal volume dial. So if the patient is inappropriately whispering or if they’re shouting into their microphone even after you’ve asked them to speak more quietly, pay attention to that disconnect. Like I said before with the other signs, this doesn’t mean that the patient is necessarily intoxicated. People do this anyway, so you want to put this all together and try to understand the best that you can based on all of these signs.

Sometimes it’s helpful to zoom in on the patient’s skin to see if the patient is sweating, if they have goosebumps, if they have signs that they may be in withdrawal, do they have a runny nose? These are all really important indicators of a potential withdrawal from drugs or intoxication from drugs. And so all the things that you can see in person, you want to be able to see that on camera. And one of the benefits that you have on camera is that you can zoom in and that can help you see things that you might actually not even see when you’re in person. So that’s actually a great advantage of psychiatry done on the video.

Addressing Signs Informally and Safely

So if you see the signs that the patient may be intoxicated or in withdrawal, you don’t need to be accusatory. You just need to treat it as a safety issue. You can say, for example, to your patient, I noticed that your speech is a bit slower today and you seem to be having a hard time keeping your eyes open. Have you taken any extra medications today? Have you had anything to drink? What’s going on? And I would suggest that you start with an open ended question to say what’s going on, and then ask them if they have been taking any substances, or if perhaps there are other issues that are causing them to be sleepy or have the symptoms that they’re having. Maybe the patient has the flu and they’re not withdrawing from opioids. I mean, that is also a possibility. So you want to just be very thorough in observing the signs and document what you’ve observed.

If they deny that they’re intoxicated or they’re in withdrawal but the signs are obvious, you don’t need to write a controlled script that day. You document exactly what you saw: delayed processing, heavy eyelids, slurred speech, other signs that they may be intoxicated and you talk about perhaps rescheduling the visit for another day but you also want to be sure that the patient is safe, so you might need to talk with a family or somebody nearby, as long as you have proper consent in the books, and try to have a safety plan to make sure that the patient is not going to get themselves into trouble.

You also want to have sources that you can refer to for detox and rehab. And of course, as we talk about in other episodes, you want to be able to activate 911 or emergency response for the patient if this is an emergency.

The Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, or PDMP

Let’s talk a little bit about the prescription drug monitoring programs or PDMPs. To prove that you’re doing your job properly, one of the most important tools that you need to do, you need to access is the Prescription drug monitoring program, or PDMP. Because we’re physically distant from the patient, we have to lean heavily on objective data to double check what the patient tells us and one of those tools is the prescription drug monitoring program.

One of the myths is that there’s one giant federal nationwide database that shows every prescription in the country. This is not correct. That doesn’t exist. The PDMPs are state based programs, and most states connect through a secure network called the PMP interconnect, which lets them see across state lines. If your patient lives on a border and fills a stimulant in California, an opioid in Nevada, and a benzo in Arizona, you can usually see if those states share data. But at the very least, you need to check the PDMP for the state that the patient is located in and the state that the patient has been in in the past. And this can be a challenge, but it’s worthwhile to do that.

But know that you have limitations. The data isn’t always instant. There can be a delay of a few days before a pharmacy upload shows up on the screen. Also, a PDMP only tracks legal pharmacy dispense medications. It will not tell you if the patient is buying drugs off the street. Because of this, the PDMP is a helping tool, not a lie detector.

The PDMP is really helpful to see if the patient has been doctor shopping. Are they getting a little bit of controlled substance from one doctor and then going to try to get more from another doctor. And this shows you through the patient’s history what you’re dealing with, if you need to have a higher sensitivity in your radar for prescribing controlled substances to this patient. What you want to do is to see if the patient is getting scripts from multiple doctors at the same time, or they are getting early refills, and are they constantly switching pharmacies, or they taking dangerous combinations like sedatives and opioids from different clinics.

For example, they might be seeing an orthopedic surgeon who prescribes them opioids and then now if you prescribe benzodiazepines, there might be a very dangerous combination that can cause really bad sedation.

Drug Metabolism and Interactions

Some medications can affect various organ systems in the body, and therefore your ability to process and metabolize medication. For example, you know that the cytochrome P450 enzymes in the liver process medications and substances, and certain drugs can upregulate that so that the liver processes drugs faster and others can down regulate it so that the drug stays in the system for longer periods of time. And the way that the liver works is if it’s not processing the drug, then your drug level builds up and this can also happen in the kidneys. And in general, the medications that are prescribed, you need to make sure that you’re looking at the other medications that the patient has and make sure that you don’t have either a dangerous dose of medication in the body because the liver or the kidneys is not processing the drugs fast enough, or perhaps the controlled substances that you prescribed are not effective enough because they are getting other drugs that reduce the medication level by increasing the metabolism of the drug.

Clinical Story: The Benzodiazepine Case

I’m going to tell you a story that will help illustrate the challenges dealing with patients with controlled substances, and what you need to look out for. I had a patient early in my career that was on benzodiazepines, but she kept saying that her medication had run out early or that she lost her medication or that the medication wasn’t working and she needed higher and higher doses. What I realized was that the patient wasn’t actually losing her medication prescription. She just wanted more of the medication because she was getting addicted to the medication and so I needed to work with her to reduce the amount of medication that she was taking, the controlled substance. And in this case, it was a benzodiazepine.

And you can get caught as a clinician with a patient that doesn’t tell you the truth. And we know that this happens. So you need to be very cautious of making sure that you think clearly about what the patient is telling you and if it makes sense. Does it make sense that the patient keeps losing their controlled substances, but not their regular prescription of, let’s say, an antidepressant like an SSRI that does not have abuse potential. So when you hear this, it needs to pass the sniff test. Does that make sense? And if your gut is telling you that it doesn’t make sense, then you might need to have firmer boundaries and not necessarily renew the medication just because the patient says that they lost it. And it’s going to be actually very difficult for you to renew the medication early anyway, because most pharmacies are going to allow only a 30 day prescription for controlled substances.

So what you want to do is have a conversation with the patient and get to the heart of why this is happening, why they feel the need for greater doses and early refills, and get to the heart of the clinical issue so that you don’t compromise safety and you are following the law.

A Quick Word From Orbit Health

Orbit health is a company that provides services to California County Behavioral Health. If you are a psychiatrist interested in working with a company that will support you and put you in the best position to succeed, there’s no better choice than Orbit Health. If you want to learn more, go to Orbit Health.com Thanks.

Categorizing Patient Risk Levels

You want to also start thinking about putting patients in risk categories when they’re on controlled substances. For example, low, medium, moderate or high risk patients. And what I mean is patients that are at risk of diverting their medications or abusing their medications.

• Low risk patients: These patients have a stable history. They have consistent medical records that you can actually read, a clean PDMP report and obvious life improvements from the medication and clear outside collateral information. For this kind of patient maybe your threshold for suspicion is not as low. Maybe you can trust them a little bit more.

• Moderate risk patients: Now let’s talk about a patient who is at moderate risk of diverting their medications, the controlled substances that you prescribe. These patients may have limited past records. There may be some diagnostic uncertainty, you may not exactly be sure what the right diagnosis is and you’re working through it. And they may have a past history of substance use that doesn’t appear to be active right now. But you don’t know that for sure and therefore they are higher risk than the low risk individuals that we talked about.

• High risk patients: The patients in this category are often unstable, they have a chaotic PDMP with multiple recent doctors, many different prescriptions for many different doctors, and a history of constantly losing their pills or a story that keeps changing.

Think back to the story that I told you about my patient. It wasn’t very clear why the patient kept losing their medications. Their story didn’t really make a whole lot of sense to me, and the diagnosis was a little less clear than what I usually was able to diagnose with other patients. And therefore my suspicion was higher and ultimately, I got to the bottom of what was happening and saw that this patient was a high risk patient that was using higher doses than necessary than I wanted to prescribe.

So here’s the biggest pearl of the day. Your patient’s risk level doesn’t automatically determine whether you say yes or no to the controlled substance. It determines how closely you monitor them, what doses you might prescribe, how frequently you check up on them, and getting collateral information like family and also medical records.

And of course, you need proper consent for that. But all of this information allows you to feel more confident about prescribing controlled substances via telemedicine. And this needs to be documented, because if you’re ever called out on this and accused of an illegitimate prescription, you have evidence to show that you ask the right questions you observed on camera the signs and symptoms of the patient, and you did the best job you could to make a reasonable decision. And that’s all we can do as clinicians: make reasonable decisions based on as thorough of research as we can and examination of the patient. So if you do all of that, it’s very hard to accuse you of doing something wrong.

Checking for Diversion Without Ruining the Relationship

So how do you look for diversion? Meaning that the patient is selling or giving away their pills without sounding like you are not on the patient’s side, and that you are not trying to be overly strict because what I’ve learned in my career is that you want to have a balance. You don’t want to be a pushover where the patient can just rule your life and decide which medications, at what doses, what the diagnosis is–you don’t want that. But you also don’t want to be overly rigid, because when you’re overly rigid, you lose trust with the patient, the patient will just go somewhere else, and they’re not going to get their needs met, and you’re not going to have a patient. So what you want to do is balance. So you want to be careful and have boundaries, but you also want to be reasonable and listen to the patient and make the patient feel heard.

If you’re too soft, like I said, you’re going to get manipulated. But here’s a pearl. If you’re too rigid, you’re also going to get manipulated. Because patients who might be used to manipulating doctors and not all patients do this, but some do, they will also manipulate a rigid doctor, and it will become a battle between you and the patient.

So once again, think through what is happening. One lost prescription over a whole year is an accident, but a pattern of repeatedly losing scripts, frequent early requests, or rigid insistence on an exact brand or dose, refusal to let you speak with family or collateral informants, or a sudden excuse to avoid a drug screen–that’s a pattern that might change your plan. And you also don’t want to prescribe way over the FDA approved limits of the medication. Sometimes this is necessary, but you don’t want to have a pattern of doing this. And another pro tip if you do get in trouble, what happens is they look back at your patterns of prescribing. So if you have lots of patients on high doses of controlled substances, then you are going to look like a pill mill.

So the bottom line is just be reasonable. Give what the patient needs. Don’t be the doctor that everyone says, oh, that’s the benzo doctor, because people are going to come to you and try to manipulate you, and also you’re going to get in trouble because there’s going to be a perception that you are very quick to prescribe benzodiazepines or other controlled substances.

Specific Classes of Controlled Substances

I talk about benzodiazepines because that’s the most commonly prescribed controlled substance that we prescribe. And in fact, that is the most commonly prescribed medication class in the entire world. And so there’s going to be extra scrutiny on those medications.

Now, of course, there are other medications like buprenorphine, like opioids that are part of controlled substances, ADHD medications like Adderall. And so just be aware the medications that get a lot of attention are often the ones that have the most chance of you being scrutinized over.

For example, Adderall. Adderall is something that is abused and it is all over the country. All over the world, people abuse Adderall. Now, Adderall is also a very good medication when it’s indicated. So you don’t want to not prescribe Adderall, but you also don’t want to be the Adderall doc, where everybody who comes to you gets put on Adderall. And just be very cognizant of the fact that Adderall is an amphetamine, it’s mixed amphetamine salts, and it actually works by dumping dopamine into the synapse and preventing the uptake of dopamine.

And you know what other substance behaves similarly to Adderall? That’s methamphetamine. Methamphetamine is very similar to Adderall in its function because it dumps dopamine into the synapse, and it slows the reuptake of dopamine in the presynaptic nerve. So what you want to do is when somebody has a history of methamphetamine use, you want to be a little more cautious about what medications you want to prescribe, and Adderall may not be the right choice, because they may instead use Adderall as a substitute for their methamphetamine addiction.

Now, when we talk about addiction, we want to say the right word. So it’s actually substance use disorder. So I’m going to catch myself on that and say substance use disorder.

Let’s Talk About Drug Screens

This can be a very important part of caring for your patient, especially if the patient has a history of a substance use disorder. And you need to have the proper tools in place to order that lab, either a serum lab or a urine drug screen. And that can be done oftentimes through your medical record, depending on who you’re working with and if you’re working with a company.

For example, if a patient comes to you and they have a substance use disorder and you’re not doing urine drug screens, then you don’t have a big piece of information that can be really helpful in deciding whether you want to prescribe controlled substances or the dose that you might want to prescribe, or the type of controlled substance that you want to prescribe.

And many doctors worry that ordering a drug screen will break the therapeutic alliance. Well, let me tell you, I’ve done it and it doesn’t break the therapeutic alliance, as long as you normalize it. Don’t make it a punishment. Instead, say something like these medications are highly regulated and they carry real safety risks, so the standard for my practice is that every single patient that I treat over video, they need to have a urine drug screen and so you need to go to a lab and I’m going to order that for you and we need to do that every so often. Now I’m not telling you how to practice medicine on this podcast. And you’re going to need to use your own clinical judgment to decide when it’s a urine drug screen versus a blood screen, or whether you need to do it at all. So that is something that you will need to do, you will need to decide when it’s appropriate. But I can tell you that when you are rigorously applying a high standard, you’re less likely to get in trouble, and your patient is more likely to have better care because you know that the patient is clean.

Now, they can get around the drug screens, and there are lots of really complicated, sophisticated ways of doing that. And that industry is typically ahead of the lab industry. So there’s always a way to beat the drug screen. So keep that in mind. But you can only do what’s available to you in terms of the technology. And so if you’re ordering the right screens and the patient finds a way to get around it, well, if you’re doing everything the way you’re supposed to do, sometimes they’ll get around it and there’s not a whole lot more that you can do. But just be aware that this could happen.

Focusing on Functional Outcomes

The convenience of telehealth can create pressure to make fast decisions. But don’t let this lower your standards. Remote prescribing doesn’t mean shortcuts, especially when it comes to prescribing controlled substances. Take the time to get collateral information if and when it’s available, especially for conditions like ADHD where a lot of patients feel that they have ADHD or attention deficit, or they feel that their children have it. But take the time to review collateral information, for example, speaking with family, as long as you have consent, looking at the medical records and looking perhaps at school records, both historical and current school records, and determine whether a patient might have actual ADHD or if they just want a stimulant because it’s fun to do that.

And know that the risk of patients abusing stimulants, or very high because the stimulant gives a high if taken at high doses. And people often take high doses of medications such as Adderall in order to give them a bump. But the patient also needs to know that if they don’t take the Adderall or stimulant the right way, they’re basically borrowing on their happiness for tomorrow. So they may be especially happy and stimulated today, but that’s going to come back to haunt them tomorrow when they have a dopamine crash. And then what happens is the patient takes more and more of the medication just to feel normal. And you want the patient to understand that. So it’s often helpful to have that conversation with the patient.

And stop just asking if the symptoms are better. Now you do obviously want to ask if they’re feeling better and the symptoms are better, but you want to do more than that. You want to see what their functional outcomes are. Are they behaving better on the screen, are they maintaining their social or occupational function. And so controlled substances must be tied to real improvements in a patient’s life. If the patient’s life is getting worse with the increase in the controlled substances, then maybe that is not helping and you might need to have a different strategy.

I want to remind you that many controlled substances are intended to be temporary. For example, benzodiazepines for anxiety, in most cases, not all, but in most cases, benzodiazepines should be used on a short term basis. And there are some people who can be functional long term with a small dose of benzodiazepines, but in most cases you want this to be a temporary tool, while other medications and other therapy is kicking in and is optimizing.

Functional Examples by Class

• For stimulants: are their grades going up? Is their work performance steadier? Are they making fewer careless mistakes? Or is the stimulant prescription not helping at all?

• For anti-anxiety medications: Has their panic dropped enough so that they can actually go to the grocery store or drive to work? If that’s not happening and they need more and more medication, that could be a red flag that either the medication is making things worse, or they’re using the medication inappropriately for addiction treatment

• For substance use disorder treatment: is a more appropriate term for this is medication assisted treatment such as buprenorphine. So are they staying in treatment or stopping illicit drug use? So if a patient is on let’s say a buprenorphine and they’re still using opioids, then it’s possible that the buprenorphine and likely that it’s not the right medication for them or the plan is not the correct plan because they’re using the buprenorphine concurrently with the street drugs and that is typically a dangerous scenario.

Also know that there are medications like Suboxone, you know, alternate to buprenorphine. It’s Buprenorphine that has naloxone also in it, so that the chance of abuse is lower. For example, the patient can’t inject the medication without going into a withdrawal. And that precipitated withdrawal is very unpleasant. So somebody on Suboxone, which is again, buprenorphine and naloxone together, will typically not abuse it by injecting the medication.

Now, I have heard stories of buprenorphine in the form of Suboxone being abused, but that’s much less likely than buprenorphine on its own. So another pearl is know that there are multiple tools available for you, including different kinds of medication. For example, with benzodiazepines, the short acting benzodiazepines, there’s more of a risk of abuse because they have a higher chance of giving the patient a high. And in general, anything that gives a much quicker high is going to be more likely to be abused, and the patient is more likely to have dependence on that medication. So when possible, use benzodiazepines that are longer acting.

Now again, I’m not telling you how to practice medicine. And sometimes short acting medications like Xanax are very useful because sometimes the patient needs a quick rescue of their anxiety, but otherwise they’re not using high doses and they’re not using it frequently, and therefore a quick rescue can be helpful. Whereas in other patients, a quick rescue might actually be more harmful because it makes their next episode of anxiety much worse.

Research shows that telehealth for substance use disorder treatment using buprenorphine works beautifully. It keeps the patient in treatment longer and lowers overdose rates without increasing drug diversion. But like I said, even buprenorphine can be abused, diverted, misused, and so you want to rely on appropriate intervals of seeing your patient, making sure that you get all the information that you can get about their diagnosis and about how they’re doing, and cross all the T’s and dot all the I’s. And that’s going to keep you safe and the patient safe.

What to Do When a Red Flag Pops Up?

When a concern arises on the screen, or on the prescription drug monitoring program, your next step is usually not to immediately stop the medication. Your next step is to increase your information.

Imagine a new adult ADHD evaluation. The patient gives you a great interview and you check off all the boxes for attention deficit with their school history is vague, they have no old records, and they have a history of getting anxiety medication from three different urgent care clinics, and it appears on the map. That doesn’t necessarily mean you say no to more controlled substances. It just means that you move slower. Instead of writing a standard 30 day supply, you need to first figure out whether the medication actually is needed and if it’s been helpful.

Now, you won’t always get a straight answer from the patient, so you need collateral information like we described. And if you feel that the patient is at moderate risk, but you still want them to get the controlled substance, you don’t necessarily need to write a 30 day supply. You can write a seven day supply or a 14 day prescription. You can require them to get those past medical records before the next refill or you do a routine drug screen and you schedule a follow up visit in one week.

So shortening the prescription window is a tool that you can use. Most doctors feel like they need to prescribe 30 days, and I’m telling you that you don’t need to do that. And if the patient gets angry and doesn’t want to work with you on a one week prescription, then that’s a red flag and your threshold for suspicion goes up.

Practicing telepsychiatry well isn’t about having a fancy camera. It’s not about the technology, because the technology is there. It’s about keeping a tight, safe, clinical standard, and that doesn’t change just because there’s distance between you and the patient.

Episode Recap

So I’m going to recap a couple of the points that we talked about today.

First I want to say that the most important thing when you are prescribing is are you doing it for a legitimate medical purpose. And that’s actually verbiage that’s in the Ryan Haight act. So when you’re prescribing a controlled substance, are you doing it for a legitimate medical purpose? And when I say medical I also include psychiatry. So a mental health purpose. And are you prescribing doses and medications that make sense for the patient? Are the patient’s compliant with the way that you’re prescribing the medication, or are they asking for higher doses, early medication refills, and otherwise unusual behaviors of requesting the drug?

Also, you want to make sure that you are checking the prescription drug monitoring program or PDMP. Make sure to check the one not only that is in the state that your patient is in, but if you can check states where the patient used to live, that is also something that can be very helpful. And I understand that that might not be practical in all cases to do that, but it’s an extra measure to make sure that the patient is not doctor shopping. And this would be even more important if the patient just moved to the new state and may have been living in other states just recently. If the patient has been living in the same state and doesn’t travel and has been living there for years, then maybe it’s not as important to check other states. But checking the PDMP is one of the most useful and protective things that you can do for your patient and for yourself.

Conclusion

In our final episode of our four part series on the Ryan Haight Act, we’re going to talk about the special registration process. The DEA has proposed a process, and we’re going to get into the details of that process so that you can be aware of what might happen. Although the DEA has only proposed this if this proposal goes into effect, I want you to be ready for it.So that’s what we’re going to talk about in the fourth part of our four part series on the Ryan Haight Act.

I hope you got a lot out of this episode, and you stay tuned for future episodes of The Telepsychiatrist Advantage. So whether you’re already practicing remotely, thinking about starting or building tele psychiatry programs in your system, I’m glad you’re here.

Thanks for listening to the Telepsychiatry Advantage. I’m your host, Dr. Edward Kafterian