Telemedicine experts and advocates came from all over the country to attend the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) 2015 Fall Forum www.americantelemed.org held in Washington D.C. September 16-18. One of the main goals was to attend and/or use social media to help the ATA community lobby Senators and Representatives on Capitol Hill as to what is really needed to deliver telehealth effectively.
The “State of the Telemedicine Industry” opening session drew a packed audience to hear a talk by Reed Tuckson MD, President ATA and Managing Director for Tuckson Health Connections. He emphasized the immediate need to provide for interstate licensure portability, remove artificial practice barriers for online prescribing, and expand telehealth coverage to Medicare patients living in urban areas.
He also wants to see physicians achieve leadership through their professional societies that would help physicians integrate telemedicine into practices. Technology must integrate clinical encounter data with electronic medical records for interoperability purposes to ensure the future success of telehealth.
Jonathan Linkous, CEO, ATA gave statistics for telemedicine activities so far this year and the figures emphasize how the field is reaching out to thousands of people every day in many ways.
Some of the statistics show:
- 7,500,00 teleradiology images were taken and read
- Remote Cardiac monitoring provided services to 1,500,000
- Monitoring during surgery referred to as neurophysiologic involved 680,000 patients
- Over 500,000 consumers used websites to receive drugs
- About 450,000 consumers used directed self-monitoring
- Over 1,250,000 online consultations took place
- Over 750,000 telehealth consultations took place at the Veterans Health Administration
- Over 650,000 patients were remotely monitored in the ICU
- About 500,000 remote telemental health visits took place
- Multi-purpose institutions conducted 200,000 consultations
In addition, telehealth helped 250,000 patients use remote monitoring for implanted cardiac devices, the figure for remote patient monitoring for chronic care was at 200,000, 450,000 inmates received care through telehealth at correctional institutions, and the Department of Defense used telehealth for 100,000 patients.
Remote neurology services for 125,000 stroke patients took place, and remote patient care at walk-in clinics, took place at 20,000. Linkous explained that telepharmacy figures were not included plus some other areas such as retinal screening because the exact numbers were not available.
Representative Gregg Harper (R-MS) http://harper.house.gov one of the sponsors of the Telehealth Enhancement Act (H.R. 2066) http://congress.gov was the keynote speaker at the Forum luncheon.
The legislation would produce Medicaid health homes for individuals with chronic conditions and allow the use of home telehealth for hospice and homebound patients. The legislation would also establish medical homes for specialty care needs, such as for Parkinson’s multiple sclerosis, complex cancers, or depression
Supporters of telemedicine are also championing other pieces of legislation such as the Medicare Telehealth Parity Act (H.R.294) introduced by Representative Mike Thompson, Furthering Access to Stroke Telemedicine (FAST) Act (S.1465/H.R 2799) introduced by Senator Mark Kirk, TELEmedicine for MEDicare (TELE-MED) (S.1778/H.R.3081) introduced by Senator Mazie Hirono, and the Veterans E-Health & Telemedicine Support (VETS) Act. (H.R 2516) introduced by Representative Charles Rangel.