Telehealth News and Market Developments
The Hill: Harm reduction and addiction treatment need infrastructure investment: (9/25) – Authors from the Legal Action Center and Partnership to End Addiction issued an op-ed in The Hill urging Congress and the President to invest and integrate behavioral health and addiction treatment into health care. The authors include several main priorities for legislation to successfully meet needs:
- Enhance professional education and address the workforce shortage
- Promote telehealth options
- Expand treatment, employment and housing opportunities for recovering individuals
mHealth Intelligence: New Healthcare Platform for Black Americans Will Include Telehealth, mHealth: (9/24) – Doctor On Demand, Grand Rounds Health and Medtronic are joining large employers Walmart, Target, Best Buy, State Farm, Genentech and Accenture – also all members of the Black Community Innovation Coalition – to create a “dedicated care concierge and healthcare navigation platform” aimed at reducing barriers to care access and boosting health equity among Black Americans. The coalition is building the health platform, which it expects to launch in early 2022, after performing market research studies, employee-led focus groups, population health analyses and product design workshops.
American Medical Association (9/24) AMA weighed in with more than 100 pages of comments on the proposed 2022 Medicare physician payment schedule. The comments highlight strong demand from doctors for extended coverage of telehealth -- including for audio only and the need for coverage of virtual diabetes prevention programs.
Health Affairs: Beyond Broadband: Equity, Access, And the Benefits of Audio-Only Telehealth: (9/20) – Earlier this year, the co-authors and a group of health policy professionals gathered at the Society of Health Policy Young Professionals’ Telehealth Summit to discuss permanent telehealth policies and remarked on the importance of covering audio-only telehealth services beyond the public health emergency. In this new blog, the co-authors lay out the benefits of covering audio-only as a critical interim solution to address gaps in equity and access to care.
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