Southwest Telehealth Resource Center Blog

Tooth decay remains one of the most common chronic diseases of childhood especially for Arizona children.  Many Arizona Children start school with tooth decay, a disease that is largely preventable.  Early tooth decay can start in children as soon as the first teeth erupt and progresses with age.  By the time Arizona children reach 3^rd grade, over 75% of them have experienced tooth decay. Arizona’s oral health workforce is challenged by the high dental needs of the state’s children, especially in rural areas which extend into 80% of the state’s land.

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.

Report from a Workshop at the 2013 Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine

There are so many applications for telepsychiatry it is often hard to keep up with all of them!