If you’re as enthusiastic about telehealth as we are then you’ve already heard that a day before the New Year’s Eve ball dropped in New York City, Democratic Congressman Mike Thompson (California’s 5th district) introduced a bill to “promote and expand the application of telehealth under Medicare and other Federal health care programs…”.
Read the entire introduced bill here
The bill, called the “Telehealth Promotion Act of 2012”, could mean major gains for supporters of telehealth in that it attempts to remove coverage restrictions on telehealth from federal health care programs such as Medicare and Medicaid leading to increased services offered using telemedicine technologies.
“We support this bill and this technology” said Chairman for the UAMS Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, ANGELS Medical Director, Dr. Curtis Lowery, “We’ve used telehealth technology to create a statewide program for High Risk Obstetrical care by four Board-certified Maternal-fetal medicine specialists to serve, if needed, the 40,000 women that deliver a baby in Arkansas annually and if this bill is passed it would mean we could create more access for mothers in Arkansas.”
The bill goes on to ask for improvements to Medicare.
• Positive incentive for Medicare’s hospital readmissions reduction program.
• Health homes and medical homes.
• Flexibility in ACO coverage of telehealth.
• Recognizing telehealth services and remote patient monitoring in national pilot program on payment bundling.
• Adjustment in Medicare home health payments to account for use of remote patient monitoring.
• Including telehealth and remote patient monitoring services as part of an intervention proposal under the Medicare Community Based Care Transitions Program.
It moves on to asking for improvements to Medicaid in the “removal of limitation on coverage of services provided via a telecommunications system under Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP”.
So what does this mean for you?
“Congressman Mike Thompson’s Bill, HR6719, the Telehealth Promotion Act of 2012 represents a major step forward for advancing the use of telehealth to improve access, quality and efficiency of health care services…”, said Mario Gutierrez, Executive Director of the Center for Connected Health Policy, “This comprehensive bill now in Congress seeks to eliminate a number of unnecessary barriers in current law and removes arbitrary coverage restrictions in federally-funded health insurance programs.”
“I believe today’s technology has finally become robust and secure enough that quality healthcare can be delivered over this mode. The proof will and should always be in best outcomes for the patient” said AR SAVES Director Michael Manley, RNP, MSNSc, “Legislation encouraging and sustaining this delivery of healthcare should wholly be supported to ensure our citizens and patients are afforded the same quality healthcare, no matter where they live.”
The bill has been referred to a House subcommittee.
