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The Evolution of Telemedicine Laws: What You Need to Know
In the United States, access to healthcare services is becoming an important issue. Different states are looking to telemedicine laws as an approach to increased access to healthcare in upcoming legislative sessions. Telemedicine has been defined as the use of technology to promote long-distance healthcare on a clinical basis. It has been a major factor in fostering health-related education for both patients and professionals. It has also advanced healthcare management and organization, and it promotes public wellness and awareness of healthy practices. Common examples of telemedicine include remote patient monitoring, live video conferencing, and mobile health.
Recent studies indicate that telemedicine is cost-effective across the country – lowering scores for conditions such as depression, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. However, the adoption of telemedicine is influenced by public and private payers for reimbursement requirements such as regulations on provider relationship, delivery setting, and modality – in short, this means that the future of telemedicine is dependent on whether those who donate monetarily (and therefore cover one’s expenses) will find it to be worth navigating through various legal and organization-oriented jurisdictions. Other factors include credentialing, licensure, technology tools, broadband access, as well as a health provider and patient awareness.
Moreover, there are significant variations in telemedicine laws at the state level. Some states in the U.S are now incorporating telemedicine policy into law whereas others are addressing problems in program regulations or guidelines: in February 2019, the legislature in the state of Alaska introduced “House Bill 29,” which would require both public and private insurance firms to cover psychological health benefits provided a telemedicine provider within the state.
Similarly, the Arizona Senate is looking to pass a bill in order to eliminate the list of specialties that are required for the eligibility of telemedicine as well as prohibit insurance companies from imposing site restrictions – i.e. to distinguish between urban and rural locations for coverage and limit the services by the condition. In addition, the bill will also amend the definition of telehealth to include “remote patient monitoring” and “store-and-forward” strategies. In Connecticut, Senate bills 293 and 307 would require the social service commissioner of the state to integrate telemedicine services into the Medicaid Program.
Hawaii and Texas are the other states that are considering legislation regarding telemedicine. In Hawaii, the house bill 141 would fund coordinators who will be designated by the health director to coordinate both private and public sector programs and policies for expanding telemedicine. The house bill 1738 of the Texas Senate would establish an improved Medicaid reimbursement for home-based telemonitoring services. The bill will also create a Medicaid fee schedules for home-based monitoring provided by a qualified healthcare center.
In addition to telemedicine legislation, licensure compacts at the state-level have likewise proven an active law/policy topic, as a number of telemedicine providers may be in another state or region than the people/patients they serve. Examples include the Nursing Licensure Compact (eight states pending), the Psychology inter-jurisdictional Compact (nine states pending), and the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact (seven states pending).
As you can see that much of the activity in telemedicine policies are at the state level, there will also be several policy changes at the federal level. For instance, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services “CMS” is going to include reimbursements for services that they believe are not included in the traditional telemedicine services, which have certain restrictions for reimbursements by Medicare such as remote evaluation, virtual check-ins, pre-recorded patient information, as well as inter-professional online consultation.
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