Attendees at the inaugural “Telehealth Capitol Connection (TCC) event held on Capitol Hill heard Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) www.schatz.senate.gov and Congressional staff discuss the growing bipartisan interest in moving forward with telehealth.
The American Telemedicine Association (ATA) TCC event was moderated by Neal Neuberger Senior Policy Advisor to the ATA nealn@hlthtech.com and Gary Capistrant, Chief Policy Officer at ATA gcapistrant@americantelemed.org.
Senator Brian Schatz, (D-HI) talked about the “CONNECT for Health Act” www.congress.gov recently introduced by five co-sponsors not only in the Senate but a similar bill was also introduced in the House. He said “The “CONNECT for Health Act” is a bipartisan approach to increase the use of telehealth and remote patient monitoring through Medicare.”
He gives the bill a good chance to be enacted if partisan politics can be kept out of the conversation. He is happy with the introduction of the bill but he also realizes that although the bill is getting the right amount of attention, it’s hard to get legislation passed. As he told the attendees, “We are still just on first base.”
Aimee Grace M.D from Senator Schatz’s office wants to see telehealth move forward but there is still much more to be done. The use of telehealth needs to increase and very importantly remote patient monitoring services need to be provided to certain patients with chronic conditions. These services are especially needed in community health centers and in rural health clinics.
Panelist, Jordan See Communications Director and Legislative Assistant for Representative Gregg Harper (R-MS), talked about Representative Harper’s focus on the poor access to healthcare in Mississippi partially resulting from the lack of primary care physicians.
He talked about several bills that were previously introduced. Last April, Representatives Gregg Harper with Mike Thompson, introduced the “Telehealth Enhancement Act” that would provide incentives to reduce readmissions by developing a medical home model.
Then In July, Representatives Mike Thompson with Gregg Harper introduced the “Medicare Telehealth Parity Act” with 27 cosponsors to extend the term originating sites for telehealth services payment purposes.
Sarah Lloyd Stevenson also from Mississippi working in the Office of Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS), commented on how the University of Mississippi Medical Center in their Center for Telehealth has made a great deal of progress to help people in the state.
So far, the University’s Medical Center has provided 200 sites using teleconferencing and remote patient monitoring to help patients all over the state. She mentioned that a successful project was initiated with 200 diabetic patients when their diabetes went out of control. These patients were given technology in the form of tablets to use to monitor their glucose. As a result, zero patients were admitted to the hospital with diabetes issues and as a result, cost savings were achieved.
Jane Lucas representing the Office of Senator John Thune (R-SD) one of the co-sponsors of the Connect for Health Act discussed how the state of South Dakota is pioneering in the telemedicine field in such areas as telehome health. She mentioned how Avera Health System www.avera.org in South Dakota has successfully established a very effective and comprehensive telemedicine program.
Megan Sussman from the Office of Representative Matsui (D-CA) reinforced the idea for a standard definition for telehealth. Telehealth means different things to organizations and people across the country. Since 2013, 40 out of 50 states have introduced bills addressing telehealth policy but the bills offer wide variations in how telehealth is defined.
According to the “Telehealth Modernization Act of 2015” introduced by Representatives Matsui Bill Johnson from Ohio, there is a need to provide a workable Federal definition of telehealth to ensure the highest common denominator or care while facilitating innovation. Therefore the term has to be standardized but this will only happen when people come together on the issue.