Which Type of Facility Are You?
Which Type of Facility Are You?
Four Facility Types, Not One
The same four-category model built for ASF's Hospital standard applies here, with one deliberate change: Small is anchored to a genuine, real-world unit for telemedicine — a single licensed provider. Unlike a hospital or a physical clinic, telemedicine can be, and very often is, delivered by exactly one provider working independently, since the technology itself removes many of the physical staffing constraints a building would otherwise impose.
Standard (ST)
A fully resourced, functioning telemedicine service — a full multi-provider platform, robust technical infrastructure, no adaptation needed.
Small (SM) — where staffing depth, not crisis or poverty, is the defining constraint
Exactly one licensed provider is the confirmed anchor. This is not a research threshold requiring external verification — it is the plain, real unit of independent telemedicine practice itself: a solo provider, otherwise stable, genuinely limited only by being one person doing what a larger platform would otherwise share.
Transitional (TR)
Real national resource or infrastructure limitation, no active conflict — the same World Bank-anchored logic used throughout ASF's standards.
Crisis (CR)
Active conflict or humanitarian emergency — overrides every other consideration, exactly as in the Hospital standard.
The Universal Floor
A small number of criteria apply in full, in every one of the four types, with no exceptions: genuine patient identity verification — a real, specific step this document exists to require, not something a physical clinic ever had to think about — real informed consent about what remote care can and cannot do, dignity and non-discrimination, and a defined emergency escalation pathway that exists before it is ever needed, not improvised when it is.
Which Type of Telemedicine Service Are You?
Answer these questions in order, top to bottom. The moment you answer YES, stop — that is your answer. If you reach the end still answering NO, you are Standard.
| WORK DOWN THIS LIST. STOP AT YOUR FIRST YES. | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Is your country in an active war, armed conflict, or a declared humanitarian emergency right now? This means fighting, displacement, or a declared emergency is actually happening now — not that things are generally difficult. |
☐ YES → CR CRISIS |
☐ NO → next question |
| 2 | Does your national government struggle badly to fund healthcare, or is national power or medicine supply unreliable — even though there is no war or crisis? This is about your country as a whole, not just your own facility. |
☐ YES → TR TRANSITIONAL |
☐ NO → next question |
| 3 | Is your service staffed by exactly one licensed provider, and is that the main reason you cannot offer certain services — for example, coverage during your own absence, or care across multiple specialties or licensing jurisdictions at once? This applies even in a stable, well-funded country. A genuine solo provider, not a small team — the limit here is being one person, nothing else. |
☐ YES → SM SMALL |
☐ NO → next question |
| If you answered NO to all three questions above: You are STANDARD (ST) — no crisis, no national constraint, and staffing depth is not holding you back. |
|||
THIS IS ME
| My type: ☐ CR ☐ TR ☐ SM ☐ ST |
Example: A solo telehealth physician serving patients in rural Moldova — no active conflict, so NO to question 1. National healthcare funding is genuinely unreliable, so YES to question 2. Stop there. This service is TR.
Telemedicine Standards — overviewFacility Classification — Which Type of Facility Are You?Standard 1 — Technology Platform Reliability & SecurityStandard 2 — Cross-Jurisdictional Licensure & Legal ComplianceStandard 3 — Remote Clinical Assessment & Limitations RecognitionStandard 4 — Emergency Escalation for the Remote PatientStandard 5 — Prescribing & Controlled Substance ManagementStandard 6 — Data Privacy & Patient ConfidentialityStandard 7 — Governance & Provider CredentialingStandard 8 — Health & MigrationReferences & Index
Test your facility against this standard
Open self-assessment — no login, no fee.
Print to share.
