The secret is out. Georgia has become a hotbed for health IT (HIT) companies, both veteran and startup. Georgia holds down the nation’s top spot with more than 225 HIT companies, nine of which have cumulative revenues of close to $5 billion. There are several reasons why.
Turner Taliaferro Smith, III, Psy.D., Vice President, Business Development, TeleHealth Solutions
Rural telemedicine in the United States is receiving great attention, with considerable effort being applied to changing laws and reimbursement policies.
Many states are enacting laws requiring commercial health plans to cover medical services provided via telehealth to the same extent they cover medical services provided in-person. These laws are intended to promote innovation and care delivery in the private sector by catalyzing healthcare providers and plans to invest in and use the powerful telehealth technologies available in the marketplace.
The Mississippi Board of Medical Licensure voted Thursday to withdraw a proposed regulation that would have put a serious crimp on out-of-state telemedicine companies operating in the Magnolia State.
The only way that telemedicine services can truly expand and improve healthcare quality across the nation is by developing new state and federal policies that move toward digital and video-based physician-patient relationships. In efforts to support the expansion of telemedicine services, the state of Delaware passed a telemedicine commercial reimbursement statute, according to The National Law Review.
While telemedicine consultations have been around for decades, they have mostly connected specialists with patients in remote areas, who almost always had to visit a clinic or hospital for the videoconference. The difference now is that patients can be wherever they want and use their own smartphones or tablets for the visits, which are trending toward more basic care.
Healthcare may have been accused of lagging in technology adoption in the past, but health IT has made significant strides in the past few years. One of the biggest trends to emerge from healthcare’s digital revolution is telemedicine.