Recently, The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a proposal for it’s 2022 Physician Fee Schedule. Over the last several years, more non-traditional modalities of healthcare have found their way into the CMS reimbursement landscape. This is promising as it suggests that CMS is aligning themselves with consumer demand and technology developments by…
Download Slides In the year 2000, there were an estimated 20 million patients with diabetes. Today that number is around 30 million*. Unfortunately, a serious complication that affects this population’s eye care is not often discussed: Diabetic Retinopathy (DR). In fact, DR is the number one cause of vision loss among people with diabetes but…
If there’s a silver lining to the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s the spotlight it has put on the role of value-based, virtual health care models to address issues such as access to specialists, healthcare speed and efficiency, and healthcare inequities. Indeed, approximately 75 percent of employers in a recent survey said they plan to ramp up their implementation…
Telecommunications companies that pivoted to telehealth during the pandemic are now integrating new services into the platform to support virtual care and remote patient monitoring. The latest to do so is BlueJeans Telehealth, which was acquired by Verizon in 2020 and fine-tuned to support HIPAA-compliant virtual visits. The company announced an integration this week with…
COVID-19 necessitated widespread loosening of state and federal restrictions on and rapid expansion of telehealth. Now, as policy makers consider telehealth in the post-pandemic period, they must make decisions about payment parity—whether to continue reimbursing clinicians equivalent amounts for in-person and telehealth visits. Some argue that telehealth requires less clinical effort and fewer overhead costs…
Like so many technologies before it, telehealth is a disruptive force with seemingly limitless potential. It can be a phone call between a doctor and a patient, or a message exchange between a primary care provider and a specialist. It can even be a consumer answering a few simple questions online and getting the prescription…
Amid a return to utilization of in-person health care, telehealth and issues highlighted by the pandemic, such as health equity, will continue to grow in influence within health and well-being strategies, said Michael Thompson, president and chief executive officer of the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions. AJMC®: Hello, I’m Matthew Gavidia. Today on the…
Telemedicine use skyrocketed among primary care practices during the pandemic, specifically for those with a value-based payment model, according to a research letter published in JAMA Health Forum. Many patients were forced to delay primary care due to the pandemic, which resulted in significant revenue losses for primary care organizations. Telemedicine use naturally increased to make up for lost revenue…
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ proposed 2022 Physician Fee Schedule offers some good news for telehealth advocates. The 1747-page draft, released this week, proposes to make permanent some provisions enacted years to address the coronavirus pandemic, while continuing most until at least Dec. 23, 2023 “so that there is a glide path to…
Physician groups are calling the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule proposed rule a mixed bag for practices, which now face a potential reduction in physician reimbursement next year, among other changes. “The proposed 2022 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) represents a mixed bag for physician practices,” Anders Gilberg, senior vice president of government affairs at the…