When the covid-19 pandemic swept the country in early 2020 and emptied doctors’ offices nationwide, telemedicine was suddenly thrust into the spotlight. Patients and their physicians turned to virtual visits by video or phone rather than risk meeting face-to-face. During the early months of the pandemic, telehealth visits for care exploded. “It was a dramatic shift…
The global pandemic spurred a rapid uptake of telehealth for nearly all health care providers and has permanently changed how health care is delivered. At present, providers and insurers are grappling with how to balance telehealth and in person care, focusing discussions around reimbursement models and logistical considerations. In this article, the authors discuss whether…
In early 2020, healthcare leaders from payers to providers to technology services providers found themselves at a crossroads—innovate or fail to care for patients. I had the privilege recently of joining a virtual roundtable with a group of healthcare leaders to talk about the transformation of patient care, engagement and outreach. The panel focused on…
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…
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…
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…
As the pandemic eases and state public health emergencies expire, healthcare providers are scrambling to figure out what they can and can’t do with telehealth any more. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis allowed his state’s state of emergency to expire this past weekend after extending it several times, ending a number of emergency measures aimed at…
Accountable Care Organizations who are at risk of owing money back to Medicare because they haven’t met spending targets on shared-risk beneficiaries now have more freedom to use telehealth. Under a guidance document released last month by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, ACOs participating in a Medicare Shared Savings Program that is under…