Policy

SEARCH 2023 – The National Telehealth Research Symposium connects health researchers, academics and visionaries in telehealth and telemedicine to share findings and foster research partnerships. The annual conference, hosted by the Society for Education and Advancement in Research in Connected Health, focuses on research of telemedicine, telehealth, eHealth, and other healthcare technologies. This year’s conference on November 7-9 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania will feature research presentations on AI, behavioral health, and more.

COVID-19 is frequently attributed with introducing healthcare providers to the world of telehealth, but for a hospital system serving patients in Colorado and Kansas, the expansion of telehealth has been the norm for almost a decade.

With growth comes a need to negotiate space in tight hospital settings. HealthONE’s remedy was to bring all telehealth under one roof at their Denver headquarters by creating the Virtual Care Center.

“This telehealth conference has been over a year in the making. We've been wanting to do this for some time ... I'm thrilled that this is happening,” John Packham said, welcoming healthcare providers gathered at University of Nevada–Reno, simultaneously connecting with others located in Carson City at the Nevada Health Centers, Las Vegas at UNLV, and virtually.

Packham, Associate Dean for the Office of Statewide Initiatives, University of Nevada–Reno, School of Medicine, added the timing of the conference was perfect with the dust setting on the pandemic.

Until earlier this year, newborn infants in the Four Corners region of New Mexico, born prematurely or with unique health problems requiring specialty care, were typically transported to neonatal intensive care units at larger hospitals hours from home.

According to Dr. Bradley Scoggins, the purchase of an Amwell telemedicine cart and a new telehealth partnership with Presbyterian Hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) team in Albuquerque, NM has helped keep more infants at the San Juan Regional Medical Center in Farmington, NM.

From Dr. Steven Hansen’s Arizona Humane Society office, you may have heard a sigh of relief when Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs signed Senate Bill 1053 into law on May 9. Beginning in August, veterinarians licensed in the state will legally be able to provide veterinary care through telemedicine, a care alternative many have become accustomed to on the human side of healthcare.

Currently, there’s a six-week waiting list for pet owners who need the Humane Society’s subsidized services at their clinics in Maricopa County. Bringing telemedicine into the picture will make a difference.

It’s tough to believe that almost 10 years ago, we began to realize a substantial cure for hepatitis C was just around the corner. When the ION-3 study results came out about the medication combination sofosbuvir/ledipasvir, there was a tangible sense that we were about to have an achievable cure.

Step forward to the present day. A handful of innovative new treatments have come and gone, leaving us with powerful options including two that can cover all the virus’s genotypes in one fell swoop.

The remarkable lifelong health benefits of breastfeeding for both a breastfeeding parent and their child are well-known, and include a reduced risk of obesity, diabetes, breast cancer, early childhood illnesses and autoimmune diseases, to name just a few. Most new parents intend to breastfeed their child, and 83.2% of newborns in the US start out receiving some breastmilk initially, but according to the CDC’s 2022 Breastfeeding Report Card, only 24.9% of infants in the United States are exclusively breastfed at 6 months of age as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Five Key Telehealth Takeaways from the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023  

On Thursday, December 29, President Biden signed into law H.R. 2716, the Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA) for Fiscal Year 2023. This legislation provides more than $1.7 trillion to fund various aspects of the federal government, including a 2-year extension of the major telehealth waivers that were initiated during the federal public health emergency (PHE). 

The full text of the legislation, which comes in at 4,155 pages, is available here. The most pertinent section of the new law that relates to telehealth is under:

Carol Yarbrough recognizes that compliance can be a scary avenue for many in the healthcare industry.

“When I was a compliance officer type person, people would avoid me on the street … they don't do that anymore,” Yarbrough joked during a recent webinar discussion on billing practices for hospital and clinic professionals.

Yarbrough, a specialist in federal and state regulatory billing and reimbursement guidelines, recently led the virtual webinar for the Southwest Telehealth Resource Center.

For decades, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), only permitted telehealth in particular geographic settings with numerous restrictions surrounding originating sites, providers, services, modality, and access options. However, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a Public Health Emergency (PHE) that relaxed these restrictions and opened the doors to the use of telehealth in the home, among other measures, which have contributed to Medicare beneficiaries utilizing telehealth in droves with an increase from 840,000 in 2019 to 52.7 million in 2020.