The Alliance for Connected Care at www.connectwithcare.org recently formed by former U.S. Senate Majority Leaders Tom Daschle, Trent Lott, and former Senator John Breaux will promote policy reform around telehealth and remote patient monitoring.
Long thought of as an issue affecting only rural areas, advances in technology and broadband deployment have fostered new models of delivery in healthcare settings across the country. Telehealth is fast becoming an integral component in the delivery of healthcare to help cope with chronic diseases and enable people to have better access to specialty and convenient primary care.
The three former senators leading the bipartisan diverse coalition is going to raise awareness among policymakers on the advancements in telehealth. Their goal is to establish a regulatory environment where patients will have more access to connected care and medical providers that are empowered to deliver safe high-quality care using advanced delivery methods.
So far, policies and regulations have emphasized keeping people out of the hospital by developing readmission penalties, preventing illnesses through wellness programs, and helping individuals coordinate care and better manage chronic diseases at home.
One major problem is that government healthcare programs generally do not reimburse home health agencies for remote patient monitoring or pay for patients to check in with care providers from their homes via real-time video.
The leaders of the Alliance have also noted that commercial insurers, large employers, and Medicaid are much further ahead in covering telehealth services than Medicare. In fact, 20 states and the District of Columbia require coverage of telehealth by commercial carriers and 45 states allow reimbursement of telehealth services in Medicaid.
The Alliance is specifically advocating for:
- Patient access to telehealth services by removing geographic and site limitations so that patients are able to communicate remotely with their providers regardless of location
- The appropriate reimbursement of providers for the delivery of telehealth regardless of payer
- Telehealth, remote patient monitoring, and other connected care technology to be included as a tool for new models of care and payment for medical homes and accountable care organizations
- A multi-stakeholder process available to develop a standard definition of safe high quality telehealth services and connected care by eliminating restrictions that hinders access
- Developing and proposing a robust consensus-based anti-fraud construct to help ensure the secure delivery of medically appropriate telehealth services
- Incorporating privacy and data security protections into all connected care innovations so that patients and providers can follow best practices to safeguard patient information
- Eliminating state regulatory barriers to hinder the practice of telehealth
- Eliminating state licensure barriers that prohibit providers from providing telehealth services to patients across state lines
Members of the Alliance are from leading companies from across the healthcare and technology spectrum representing insurers, retail pharmacies, technology and telecommunications companies, and healthcare entrepreneurs. The Alliance is advised by organizations such as Verizon, WellPoint, CVS, Walgreens, Teladoc, HealthSpot, Doctors on Demand, Welch Allyn, MDLIVE, Care Innovations, and Cardinal Health.