The State of Telehealth: Removing Barriers to Access and Improving Patient Outcomes was discussed at the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation’s Subcommittee on Communications, Media, and Broadband, hearing held October 7, 2021.
Brendon Carr, Commissioner of the FCC, discussed how the benefits of telehealth are clear and barriers still remain from legal and regulatory to connectivity challenges. Although waivers are in place, they are set to expire at the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency, it is important to not return to the telehealth status quo once the pandemic ends.
For this reason, the FCC Commissioner supports the bipartisan CONNECT for Health Act reintroduced this year by Senator Schatz, Ranking Member Wicker, and many other Members of this Subcommittees.
The legislation would take a number of steps to ensure that more people have access to telehealth. The legislation would include removing geographic restriction on telehealth services, allowing health centers and rural health clinics to provide telehealth services on a continued basis after the pandemic ends, and give the HHS Secretary additional authority to waive telehealth restrictions after the pandemic ends.
FCC Commissioner Carr concluded by saying, “The Telehealth Modernization Act and the Protecting Rural Telehealth Access Act championed by Members of this Subcommittee are also valuable pieces of legislation that would extend many of the same waivers.
Another speaker at the hearing, Dr. Sterling Ransone, President of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), reports that 133,500 physicians and student are members of the AAFP. Dr. Ransone calls for the creation of a pilot program to fund digital health navigators to develop of digital heath literacy programs.
He also suggests deployment of digital health tools that would provide interpretive services at the point of care. These tools need to be available in non-English languages easily and securely integrated with third party applications and include assistive technology. The pilot should include robust evaluations to demonstrate how the interventions have addressed gaps in care or increased access for underserved populations.
Dr. Sanjeev Arora, Director and Founder, Project ECHO/ECHO Institute at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, pointed out how at the onset of COVID-19, ECHO in October 2020, launched the National Nursing Home COVID-19 Action Network.
More than 9,000 of the nation’s 15,000 nursing homes joined the Network, a partnership of AHRQ, Project ECHO, and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. More than 30,000 healthcare workers were mentored as part of the initiative as part of one of 326 weekly virtual learning communities.
Deanna Larson President, Avel eCare based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Executive Secretary for ATA, reported that Avel eCare in 1993 began to take care of patients in very rural areas using telemedicine. Today Avel eCare now reaches patients served by more than 600 facilities in 32 states.
She explained that during the past year and a half, Avel has developed new services and solutions for the challenges resulting from the pandemic. This includes ramping up virtual visits, augmenting long term care, and providing virtual physician rounding in the hospital. She concluded by saying, “Avel has used telemedicine to meet real needs and as a result, has saved lives, reduced cost of care, and supported our clinical workforce.”
Go to https://www.commerce.senate.gov for more information on the Subcommittee on Communications, Media and Broadband Hearing held October 7, 2021.