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.
Writing for healthcareinfosecurity.com, former Health and Human Services, Office of Civil Rights (OCR) attorney, David Holtzman predicts that in 2016, the OCR will aggressively increase their number of audits to enforce compliance among health care providers and their business associates, with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) patient privacy and security law.
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 increasing cost of healthcare and widening gap in coverage has caused lawmakers and health service providers to explore cost-effective strategies for service delivery.
The subject of telehealth reimbursement continues to vex the community. For example, Medicare lags far behind. According to the Center for Telehealth and eHealth Law, Medicare reimbursed approximately $14 million total under its telehealth benefit for 2014.
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.
Anticipating that payers will soon embrace value-based addiction treatment programs, a national network of health providers is doubling down on mHealth.
