telemedicine is the use of medical information exchanged from one site to another via electronic communications to improve a patient’s clinical health status
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.
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.
Maybe you wake up on a Saturday with a cough or pink eye.
Wouldn’t it be great to pull out your smartphone, see a physician online and get a prescription sent straight to your pharmacy?
It could become reality under a bill lawmakers are considering in the final weeks of the legislative session. It is already happening on a small scale for some Hoosiers, but it might not be legal.
Telemedicine – or telehealth – is not new in Indiana. It helps provide access to health care for Hoosiers in rural areas, or for anyone at times when traditional doctors aren’t available.
Jonathan Woodson, MD, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs issued a memorandum on February 3rd that allows for the Military Health System to treat patients in their homes or “other patient locations as deemed appropriate by the treating provider.”
Though some prisons used telemedicine as early as the 1980s, its use has dramatically increased with the arrival of vastly improved technology, electronic medical records, and pressure to control ever rising medical costs.
The American Medical Association (AMA) today supported the bipartisan Creating Opportunities Now for Necessary and Effective Care Technologies (CONNECT) for Health Act to expand the use of telemedicine to achieve quality care for patients.
A bipartisan bill that would expand telemedicine services and remote patient monitoring (RPM) through Medicare is making headway in Congress with a projected cost savings of $1.8 billion over the next decade. The legislation could also help cut down the 7.88 billion miles home care workers traveled in 2013 for patient visits.
The American Telemedicine Association (ATA) has released the latest edition of its telemedicine state-by-state score card reports. There’s good news and bad news. In the area of coverage and reimbursement, 11 states and the District of Columbia saw their grades improve since September 2014, when ATA released the first editions of these reports, and only two saw their grades decline. But in the area of physician practice standards and licensure, 11 states saw their grades lowered while just six improved. Nevada was the only state to improve in both categories.
During a campaign stop in Iowa this week, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton touted the importance of telemedicine, Politico reported this morning. The entire speech is available from Clinton’s campaign, but here’s the relevant passage: