Telehealth News and Market Developments
Modern Healthcare: (3/12) – A multi-agency study on the use of telehealth services for behavioral healthcare in Wayne County found widespread support for continued and expanded use of virtual care, according to a newly released report. Read additional highlights in the article.
Health IT Leadership Roundtable: (3/11) – On March 11, the Health IT Leadership Roundtable hosted a roundtable discussion of leading experts and executives to discuss the power of technology to transform patient care. The HIT Roundtable is a host committee of patients, plans, hospitals, clinicians and technology companies sharing insights on interoperability and virtual care. Featured speakers included Sen. Cassidy (R-LA), Rep. Peters (D-CA) and HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) National Coordinator Micky Tripathi. Panelists and speakers highlighted how physicians, hospitals, plans and technology organizations promote and provide access to virtual care. Justine Handelman, Senior Vice President, Office of Policy and Representation at BCBSA opened the event noting that, the pandemic has shown how telehealth can be transformative, and, to continue, we must identify and remove regulatory barriers to ensure that consumers can continue to access care and that their information is kept secure. A recording of the event can be viewed here.
Healthcare IT News: (3/11) – Majority of people open to using telehealth for sleep concerns. Although few people have sought help from a sleep specialist via telemedicine, the majority of respondents to a Philips global survey say they'd be willing to try it.
PR Newswire: (3/10) – VivaLNK, a leading provider of connected healthcare solutions, today announces the results of a survey of hospitals and clinics on their opinions about the current state of remote patient monitoring (RPM). The survey reveals that nearly half (43 percent) believe RPM adoption will be on par with in-patient monitoring in five years, and 35 percent believe that it will surpass in-patient monitoring in this time frame. Twenty percent of the respondents noted having already adopted RPM, and another 23 percent plan to adopt within 12 months. When it comes to remote data collection, 90 percent of the respondents indicated that continuous, 24-hour data is important when compared to episodic data.
The National Law Review: (3/10) – On February 4, a Florida businesswoman plead guilty to criminal health care and tax fraud charges. The Department of Justice (DOJ) referred to the collective allegations as a “pernicious telefraud scheme.” Telehealth industry leaders, such as the American Telemedicine Association and the Alliance for Connected Care have rebuked this categorization and requested that the DOJ and OIG avoid conflating telefraud and “traditional fraud masquerading as telehealth.” On February 26, 2021, shortly after the DOJ Press Release and seemingly in an effort to strike a balance between the need to continue fraud enforcement efforts in the telehealth industry while responding to industry concerns that the benefits of telehealth were possibly getting overshadowed by OIG and DOJ enforcement actions, HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) Principal Deputy Inspector General Grimm released an open letter (the “Open Letter”) to both (i) affirm the OIG’s belief in the utility and value of virtual care, telehealth, and other digital health technologies, as a means to address the myriad challenges of the COVID-19 public health emergency; and (ii) announce that the “OIG is conducting significant oversight work assessing telehealth services during the public health emergency” in order to inform policy makers and other stakeholders.
Medtech Dive: (3/9) – Abbott has introduced a virtual clinic to connect users of its neuromodulation devices to talk to their physicians without meeting in person.
Becker’s Hospital Review: (3/9) – Athenahealth launched a telehealth insights dashboard to help providers, healthcare leaders and patients examine telehealth adoption rates by specialty area. The dashboard is designed to help providers gauge telehealth's staying power within various areas of healthcare delivery. It uses de-identified data on 18.4 million appointments from 60,000 providers within Athenahealth's network between Nov. 1 and Jan. 31, and it will be updated monthly.
Healthcare IT News: (3/8) – Aspire Health Partners upgrades network and adds RPM to handle telehealth needs. This resulted in a significant decrease in missed observations, an increase in compliance and audited observations, a decrease in risk incidents, an increase in staff engagement with clients and improved access to patient data by medical staff.
Med City News: (3/7) – As society begins the shift to the new normal with an increasing administration of vaccines, it is expected that consumers, providers, and payers alike will remain engaged with virtual care solutions. New digital health solutions are expanding the core functionality of telehealth platforms to expand beyond the confines of one-to-one video-chatting and improve provider efficiency.
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