Policy

When dealing with the challenges of bringing quality medical care to rural communities, the obstacles are twofold: lack of available resources and the high cost to administer care in rural environments. Combined with cuts to Medicare funding, the obstacles rural patients face begin to mount to unmanageable levels, and often force long-term care (LTC) facilities and Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs) to send patients to emergency rooms for treatment if a specialist isn’t accessible in the immediate area within the required timeframe.

It has taken quite a while, but the FDA has finally released a document that may help pave the way for whole slide imaging pathology system approval. On February 25^th they released the “Technical Performance Assessment of Digital Pathology Whole Slide Imaging Devices Draft Guidance for Industry and Food and Drug Administration Staff”.

For years telemedicine has had a significant barrier – interstate licensure. Clinicians regularly see patients in their offices who live out of state, but when it comes to telemedicine they have for the most part been prohibited from doing this. In fact, it is easier to see an out-of-state patient when they actually leave the country by telemedicine than when they stay home. This might all be finally changing.

Telemedicine is slowly making progress in terms of more and more CPT codes for reimbursement being approved each cycle. For CY 2014 there are 2 new codes that have been added to the list of Medicare telehealth services! The first one is CPT code 99495 for Transitional Care Management Services.

Need help getting started in telemedicine? Want to expand an existing telemedicine program? Or maybe you just want to find out more about what telemedicine really is. We can help you!