This week, Senator Catherine Cortez Mast and Todd Young introduced the bipartisan. legislationThe Telehealth Extension and Evaluation Act aims to continue COVID-19-related changes to the coverage of Medicare’s telemedicine services beyond the Public Health Emergency (PHE). Increasing access to telemedicine is one of the silver linings of the pandemic, and lawmakers are eager to build on these temporary policies, but be careful. Not all pre-pandemic telemedicine regulations have benefited, not all telemedicine visits are equal, and it is not clear whether telemedicine and face-to-face care should be treated as completely interchangeable. ..
In March 2020, the Trump administration Change For Medicare’s telemedicine policy under PHE. During the PHE, Medicare will refund the telemedicine visit provider at the same rate as the corresponding office or hospital visit, allowing the patient to join from home without having to move to a designated facility, and the patient is existing. Withdraw the requirement that you need to have a relationship with the provider they receive telemedicine. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has also exempted penalties for sincere violations of patients’ confidentiality obligations. Health Insurance Interoperability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). As a result, providers and patients have access to free video conferencing services. However, these policy changes will end with PHE.
There is no reason to expect the Biden administration to end the PHE, but lawmakers are working to keep these policies going. Cortez Mast / Young Bill Extends PHE-Related Policy Changes for Two Years After PHE Ends, While making some additional changes. Their law requires at least one direct visit in the last 12 months before the provider prescribes certain high-cost durable medical devices or lab tests, and the provider services through telemedicine. You are required to provide Medicare with details about the type of clinician you are providing. Both of these provisions are based on MedPAC recommendations. The law also requires HHS to study the impact of changes in Medicare’s telemedicine insurance policy during a pandemic, which will inform future policy decisions.
As recent analysis shows, telemedicine visits surged during the COVID-19 pandemic.according to Kaiser Family Foundation, Virtual visits account for 13% of all outpatient visits from March to August 2020, 11% from September 2020 to February 2021, and 8% from March to August 2021. Occupied. More than half of all outpatient visits prior to March 2020. Patients and healthcare providers are embracing telemedicine and virtually no one wants to return to the policies that existed before the pandemic. However, simply extending HHS’s pandemic-related deregulation measures is probably not the best bet... For example, HIPAA’s privacy protection exists for good reason and it is unwise to give it up forever. Moreover, it is not entirely clear whether payment equivalence between telemedicine and face-to-face visits is the correct payment policy. It is also not clear whether voice-only telemedicine visits are comparable to video visits in terms of patient outcomes or costs to healthcare providers. Voice visits are popular with older people who are less likely to use video conferencing, but do they all have the same benefits? And should they be refunded at the same rate as the video visit?
This pandemic turmoil has opened the door to rethinking telemedicine, but simply extending the current exemption does not seem to help. Of course, lawmakers are trying to provide more runways to fully evaluate telemedicine policies before making changes permanent, while preventing a return to pre-pandemic regulation.However Two years after the end of PHE and the longer these provisions remain, the more difficult it will be to change them in the future.
Chart Review: 2021 Video vs. Audio Telemedicine Use
Yashashree Marne, Healthcare Policy Intern
The Department of Health and Human Services’ Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) recently raised issues regarding the use of audio and video telemedicine services based on data from the US Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey from April to October 2021. The outline of is released. It is becoming more and more popular during the pandemic of the telemedicine service COVID-19. In general, adults over the age of 65 are more likely to use telemedicine than 18-24 years (22% vs 16%, respectively), but as the graph below shows, video support and audio only. There is a difference in age-specific telemedicine use. Young adults aged 18 to 24 were most likely to use video services for telemedicine visits (72.5% of visits), and adults aged 65 and over were least likely to use video services (43.5%). .. Voice-only telemedicine has been proposed as a way to increase medical access for people who are unlikely to use video services or have limited access to video services. However, ASPE reports provide preliminary evidence that video visits may provide better clinical care than audio-only visits. Further research into the value of audio-only and video telemedicine visits will assist policy makers in considering long-term changes to the scope of Medicare’s telemedicine services.
Follow-up of COVID-19 cases and vaccination
Margaret Burnholst, Healthcare Policy Fellow
To track vaccination progress, weekly tests compile the most relevant statistics for the week, ending the 7-day period every Wednesday.
Source: Trends in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for COVID-19 Cases and Deaths in the United States, and Trends in COVID-19 Vaccination in the United States
Note: The population of the United States is 332,493,652.
