When is a video chat with a doctor equivalent to an office visit?
State legislators across the US have been grappling with that question as hospitals press for insurance companies to fully cover virtual appointments — and insurers balk at those demands.
The U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs’ use of telemedicine to treat patients at its Vermont hospital at White River Junction resulted in an average travel payment savings of $18,555 per year between 2005 and 2013, according to a study published in the journal Telemedicine and e-Health.
Even as Teladoc and American Well fight out their legal battle over patents, the two companies continue to duke it out in the marketplace as well, as does another challenger, Doctor on Demand. On Friday a Deutsche Bank analyst broke the news in a research note that Highmark, a health insurer in Western Pennsylvania, chose not renew contracts that represented $1.5 million in annual revenue for Teladoc, or 3.6 percent of Teladoc’s projected 2016 membership, according to the Wall Street Journal.
A Texas-based health system is seeking strong success in a small school-based telehealth program by following one simple rule: “Don’t have a hammer and go searching for a nail.”
In other words, says S. Luke Webster, MD, vice president and CMIO of CHRISTUS Health, use what you have to address a specific need, and then branch out from there.
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent federal panel, recently addressed the question of whether expanded payments to doctors would spur adoption of telemedicine.
As telemedicine teeters on the edge of an explosive state of expansion, so many questions come to mind, including how it will transform healthcare delivery as we know it. With value-based reimbursement and a push to serve the underserved growing in the U.S, telemedicine stands to gain a lot of traction and quickly. Still, it’s important to remember the flesh and blood human elements driving this transitive development of reform.
A federal bankruptcy court in Columbus, Ohio, has approved a plan for failed telemedicine vendor HealthSpot to sell off its assets. Dublin, Ohio-based Healthspot chose to liquidate under Chapter 7 of bankruptcy law rather than reorganize under Chapter 11.
The ATA is lobbying CMS and Congress to remove Medicare restrictions on telehealth coverage. The new Telehealth Services Workgroup, sponsored by the American Medical Association, has already begun to facilitate proposals that would expand Current Procedural Terminology’s telehealth codes to include emerging services.
The Creating Opportunities Now for Necessary and Effective Care Technologies (CONNECT) for Health Act, proposed February 3 by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), has strong bipartisan support and would expand Medicare telehealth services, improve care outcomes and help cut costs for patients and providers. Other bill sponsors include Senators Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), John Thune (R-SD), Mark Warner (D-Va.), and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.),
A new study suggests that telemedicine-based management for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is as effective and may be comparable to in-person care.
Results show that there was no significant difference in functional outcome changes, dropout rates, or objectively measured positive airway pressure (PAP) adherence between patients having an in-person physician visit or a clinical video telehealth (CVT) based visit at their initial evaluation. Participants reported high satisfaction with the telemedicine pathway, with all of them agreeing that the quality and content of their telemedicine visits were comparable to in-person visits. The most frequently mentioned advantages of telemedicine were decreased travel burden and greater convenience.