www.fiercehealthcare.com Open in urlscan Pro
104.16.237.114  Public Scan

Form analysis
2 forms found in the DOM

GET /search-results

<form action="/search-results" method="get">
  <fieldset class="d-flex align-items-center position-relative input-search"><input type="text" placeholder="Search" name="fulltext_search" class="search-text w-100"><button class="search-submit d-flex align-items-center" id="header-search-submit"
      type="submit" aria-label="search"><svg aria-hidden="true" focusable="false" data-prefix="far" data-icon="search" class="svg-inline--fa fa-search fa-w-16" role="img" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512">
        <path fill="currentColor"
          d="M508.5 468.9L387.1 347.5c-2.3-2.3-5.3-3.5-8.5-3.5h-13.2c31.5-36.5 50.6-84 50.6-136C416 93.1 322.9 0 208 0S0 93.1 0 208s93.1 208 208 208c52 0 99.5-19.1 136-50.6v13.2c0 3.2 1.3 6.2 3.5 8.5l121.4 121.4c4.7 4.7 12.3 4.7 17 0l22.6-22.6c4.7-4.7 4.7-12.3 0-17zM208 368c-88.4 0-160-71.6-160-160S119.6 48 208 48s160 71.6 160 160-71.6 160-160 160z">
        </path>
      </svg></button><input type="hidden" placeholder="Search" name="dns" value="fiercehealthcare_com,fiercebiotech_com,fiercepharma_com"></fieldset>
</form>

GET /search-results

<form class="w-100" action="/search-results" method="get">
  <fieldset class="d-flex justify-content-between position-relative input-search"><input type="text" placeholder="Search" name="fulltext_search" class="search-text w-100"><button class="search-submit d-flex align-items-center" id="search-submit"
      type="submit" aria-label="search"><svg aria-hidden="true" focusable="false" data-prefix="far" data-icon="search" class="svg-inline--fa fa-search fa-w-16" role="img" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512">
        <path fill="currentColor"
          d="M508.5 468.9L387.1 347.5c-2.3-2.3-5.3-3.5-8.5-3.5h-13.2c31.5-36.5 50.6-84 50.6-136C416 93.1 322.9 0 208 0S0 93.1 0 208s93.1 208 208 208c52 0 99.5-19.1 136-50.6v13.2c0 3.2 1.3 6.2 3.5 8.5l121.4 121.4c4.7 4.7 12.3 4.7 17 0l22.6-22.6c4.7-4.7 4.7-12.3 0-17zM208 368c-88.4 0-160-71.6-160-160S119.6 48 208 48s160 71.6 160 160-71.6 160-160 160z">
        </path>
      </svg></button></fieldset>
</form>

Text Content

YOUR PRIVACY

Welcome! In order to deliver a personalized and enhanced site navigation, we
store information on how you use the site. We want you to know that we respect
your privacy and your right to control how we collect and use your personal
data. For more information, please see the Questex Privacy Policy Manage my
cookie preferences
Reject AllAccept All

 * Fierce Pharma
 * Fierce Biotech
 * Fierce Healthcare
 * Fierce Life Sciences Events

 * Advertise
 * About Us



 * Providers
   
   * Hospitals
   * Practices
   * Retail
 * Health Tech
   
   * AI and Machine Learning
   * Digital Health
   * Telehealth
 * Payers
 * Regulatory
 * Finance
 * Special Reports
 * Fierce 50
   
   * Special Report
   * Awards Gala

 * Resources
   
   * Webinars
   * Fierce Events
   * Industry Events
   * Podcasts
   * Survey
   * Whitepapers
 * Events
   
   
 * Subscribe

Subscribe

 * Providers
   
   * Hospitals
   * Practices
   * Retail
 * Health Tech
   
   * AI and Machine Learning
   * Digital Health
   * Telehealth
 * Payers
 * Regulatory
 * Finance
 * Special Reports
 * Fierce 50
   
   * Special Report
   * Awards Gala

 * Resources
   
   * Webinars
   * Fierce Events
   * Industry Events
   * Podcasts
   * Survey
   * Whitepapers
 * Events
   
   
 * Subscribe

 * Fierce Pharma
 * Fierce Biotech
 * Fierce Healthcare
 * Fierce Life Sciences Events

 * Advertise
 * About Us




Health Tech


HEALTH SYSTEMS URGE CONGRESS TO LAY DOWN A PERMANENT ROAD MAP FOR TELEHEALTH
SERVICES AS CLOCK TICKS ON DECEMBER DEADLINE

By Heather LandiApr 11, 2024 12:00pm
House Energy and Commerce CommitteeTelehealthMedicareProvidence St. Joseph

A major House subcommittee is considering 15 bills to expand access to
telehealth services as the clock ticks on a Dec. 31 deadline on pandemic-era
flexibilities. (Getty Images)

A major House subcommittee is considering 15 bills to expand access to
telehealth services as the clock ticks on a Dec. 31 deadline on pandemic-era
flexibilities.

The American Telemedicine Association has referred to 2024 as the "Super Bowl"
of telehealth regulation as the trade group pushes Congress to make permanent
the Medicare telehealth flexibilities implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic.







"The looming deadline gives us a chance to examine long-term telehealth
solutions that can drive innovation and health care through greater
delivery," House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee Chair Brett Guthrie,
R-Kentucky, said during a subcommittee hearing Wednesday. "A number of the bills
make permanent a variety of COVID-era policies most notably permanently waiving
originating site requirements as well as the policies expand the list of
providers eligible to treat patients via telehealth."





Lawmakers are weighing whether to issue another short-term extension on
telehealth flexibilities as they continue to evaluate cost and quality issues or
to enact permanent changes to virtual care reimbursement.

Many health systems and providers urge lawmakers to move forward on permanent
Medicare coverage for telehealth services to provide clarity and payment
stability.

"Failing to make the COVID-era telehealth waivers permanent will result in a
tragic loss of access to care for Medicare beneficiaries," Lee Schwamm, M.D.,
senior vice president and chief digital health officer at Yale New Haven Health
System, testified during the hearing.







"So often, we give lip service to providing patient-centered care but rarely do
we deliver on that promise. Telehealth allows us to do that, especially when a
medical condition or social circumstance makes travel to the doctor's office, a
physical, emotional or financial ordeal," Schwamm, who also is an associate dean
for digital strategy and transformation at Yale School of Medicine, told
lawmakers.

Prior to the pandemic, telehealth was mostly a cash-only service out of reach
for most vulnerable populations and often used to deliver isolated and episodic
care for low-complexity conditions, he noted.

Where Medicare leads, commercial insurers tend to follow. "Elimination of the
waivers will have a profound ripple effect across the healthcare ecosystem,
especially for vulnerable populations," Schwamm said.

In the past four years, health systems and providers have made deep investments
in virtual care capabilities, with telehealth and in-person care now "deeply
integrated and intertwined in routine healthcare delivery," Schwamm told
lawmakers.



"Due to congressional inaction, telehealth's uncertain future continues to have
a chilling effect on the healthcare ecosystem," he said.


RELATED

The public health emergency has ended. What's next in a post-PHE world?

Hybrid care that incorporates both virtual and in-person options has become a
new standard of care, said Eve Cunningham, M.D., group vice president and chief
of virtual care and digital health at Renton, Washington-based Providence health
system.

"Patients aren't tracking on an extension; patients expect this model of care.
We need permanency in our ability to deliver this type of care. In addition, for
health systems when we build out some of these programs, for example, hospital
at home, remote patient monitoring, tele-physical therapy or other types of
broad programs we want to grow, there is an investment involved and when you
have uncertainty as to whether or not there will be permanency in reimbursement
you are going to be hesitant to make the investments to build that out,"
Cunningham told lawmakers Wednesday.

Telehealth has become an integrated part of Providence's care delivery system,
she noted, making up about 20% of ambulatory care visits. Telehealth services
are deployed across 93 acute care hospitals, including 42 hospitals from other
health systems, and two high schools, with more than 1.2 million telehealth
visits annually, according to her testimony.

"Telehealth is no longer a nice to have, but a core function of our healthcare
delivery," Cunningham said.

She added, "Telehealth expands access to high-quality, coordinated care to more
people in more places. Telehealth enables us to offer specialty services in
remote and rural areas like Kodiak, Alaska, while also allowing us to care for
underserved communities in urban areas like Los Angeles," she said.

Virtual care services also can help address the severe workforce shortage and
clinician burnout issues facing health systems by creating flexibility in
scheduling and care provider location, executives said.

Providence, like many other health systems, supports the CONNECT for Health Act
and the Telehealth Modernization Act, two pieces of purpose legislation that
would make many telehealth flexibilities permanent.

"When we don’t have permanency in telehealth reimbursement, it stifles the
innovation, it stifles the ability for us to be able to really scale out and
grow some of these programs," Cunningham said.

The CONNECT for Health Act would permanently remove telehealth geographic
restrictions and expand originating site locations to include the patient’s home
and remove requirements for in-person visits for behavioral health treatment. It
would also allow rural health clinics and Federally Qualified Health Centers to
serve as distant sites.

The Telehealth Modernization Act would permanently remove geographic originating
site restrictions, expand the types of providers eligible to provide telehealth
services and extend coverage for audio-only telehealth, among other telehealth
flexibilities.

The American Hospital Association (AHA) is among the industry groups pushing
Congress to make key telehealth flexibilities permanent before they expire on
Dec. 31, 2024. "Given current healthcare challenges, including major clinician
shortages nationwide, telehealth holds tremendous potential to leverage
geographically dispersed provider capacity to support patient demand," the AHA
wrote in a statement submitted to the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on
Health.

Lawmakers are weighing these legislative moves as they debate issues around cost
and quality as well as the risks of fraud and abuse.

On the latter issue, a 2022 report from the Department of Health and Human
Services’ Office of Inspector General (OIG) suggested that telehealth fraud was
rare in Medicare during the COVID-19 pandemic. OIG looked at 742,000 providers
that billed for a telehealth visit between March 1, 2020, and Feb. 28, 2021.
More than 28 million beneficiaries, about 2 in 5, used telehealth services
during that time. OIG identified 1,714 providers whose billing for telehealth
services posed a high risk.

"It appears that telehealth can be used to deliver care without actually raising
those serious concerns," Guthrie said during the hearing.


RELATED

DEA extends pandemic rules for telehealth prescribing through 2024 as agency
irons out new policies

Regulators, lawmakers and researchers also continue to study whether telehealth
services increase cost and utilization. Concerns that telehealth will drive up
healthcare costs are a key impediment to its permanent expansion. There is
ongoing debate about whether virtual care is a substitute for in-person care or
an additive.

A previous telehealth extension was estimated by the Congressional Budget Office
to increase Medicare costs by more than $2 billion, Guthrie noted during the
hearing. "Making these authorities permanent is likely to cost more than a
short-term extension. We want to make sure that whatever we move out of the
committee is paid for and is delivering the best value for seniors," he said.

Research shows that telehealth increases spending, said Ateev Mehrotra, M.D., a
Harvard professor of healthcare policy and medicine who has conducted extensive
research on the impact of telehealth. 

But, the question of whether telehealth saves money is the wrong angle, he noted
in his testimony. Policymakers should instead formulate their policy decisions
based on the value of telehealth services.

"In my own research, we find that greater telemedicine use does lead to more
visits, as well as improvements in chronic disease, medication adherence and
fewer emergency department visits. However, these improvements do come at a
cost. We estimate the greater telemedicine use is associated with a 1% to 2%
increase in overall healthcare spending in the Medicare program," Mehrotra, a
hospitalist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, testified Wednesday.

"Based on these findings, I urge Congress to permanently eliminate site location
requirements and allow video visits for all conditions at any site. While
telemedicine does increase spending, the increase is modest, and is associated
with improvements in access and quality," he said.


RELATED

SAMHSA's final rule makes COVID-era flexibilities permanent for opioid treatment
programs

Contrary to many other providers who advocate for payment parity with in-person
care, Mehrotra believes telehealth visits should be reimbursed at a lower rate
than in-person visits. "Payments for care and Medicare are based on the time a
clinician takes to provide that care and the associated space staff and
equipment. If something costs less, we should be paid less," he said Wednesday.

He added, "I do not think Medicare should cross-subsidize in-person visits with
telehealth visits because will create distortions in the market. It will give
virtual-only companies, many of those funded by private equity, an unnecessary
competitive advantage and will also incentivize clinicians to give up their
physical practice."

Mehrotra also urged regulators to closely monitor virtual-only companies to
ensure they provide high-quality care services.

Payment parity continues to be a key issue in the discussions around Medicare
telehealth policy. Providence's Cunningham pushed back on the idea that
telehealth services require less investment from providers.

"Just because we're offering visits virtually does not mean that we have a
significant change in our overhead costs. We still have to pay all of our
overhead regardless of whether or not we're doing a mix or a hybrid of in-person
and virtual care. And in addition, for virtual care, there are expenses that
need to be considered. There are expenses involved in standing up programs, the
implementation, the workflow redesign, the change management, license
credentialing, ensuring that you have billing and compliance and administrative
costs as well," she told lawmakers.

Schwamm said setting a much lower reimbursement rate for virtual care could
discourage the use of telehealth services.

"Providers simply can't take a 50% pay cut when they could be seeing an
in-person patient at full rates. Remember, we have unmet demand, my office could
be filled with patients from now until the cows come home," Schwamm said. "I
think we have to recognize that we have to tie it to the true cost of providing
the visit. Right now the cost is actually higher, because we have to make full
in-person capability and telehealth capability."

He added, "If we have a permanent road map, we can start to actually readjust
the expense base and figure out ways to deliver telehealth at lower cost. I
would be in favor of a ramp that would take us from full parity down to a lesser
value. But, we need to study very carefully where that price point is so that it
balances utilization rather than creates perverse incentives."

Fred Riccardi, president of the Medicare Rights Center, a national consumer
service organization, advocated for greater oversight of telehealth service
before permanently expanding Medicare coverage.

"There is still much we don't fully understand, including how various services
are working for beneficiaries, whether they are high quality or their impact on
health care disparities and what we do know suggests room for improvement," he
testified. "We believe that continuing the pandemic-era system without
adjustments to incorporate lessons learned, such as the need for additional data
oversight and beneficiary protections, would be a missed opportunity."

The organization recommends prioritizing telehealth policies that meaningfully
increase access, promote health equity, include robust consumer protections and
drive high-quality care.

House Energy and Commerce CommitteeTelehealthMedicareProvidence St. JosephYale
New Haven Health SystemHarvard Medical SchoolBeth Israel Deaconess Medical
CenterCOVID-19Healthcare CostsCenters for Medicare & Medicaid Services
(CMS)Digital healthDigital
HealthFinanceHospitalsPayersPracticesProvidersRegulatoryTelehealth



RELATED ARTICLES

Streamlining Procurement to Cut the Total Cost of Care
Apr 15, 2024 08:00am
Nearly 80% of docs employed by hospitals, corporate entities in continued shift
away from independent practice
Apr 12, 2024 07:55am
High volume, high value hospital transactions kick off 2024
Apr 11, 2024 05:00pm
Report: Spending on Leqembi could hit $3.5B next year, CMS says
Apr 11, 2024 03:50pm
See more articles
 * Connect
   
   * The Team
   * Advertise
 * Join Us
   
   * Newsletters
   * Resources
   * RSS Feeds
   * Editorial Advisory Council
 * Our Brands
   
   * Fierce Pharma
   * Fierce Biotech
   * Fierce Healthcare
 * Our Events
   
   * Life Sciences Events

©2024 Questex LLC All rights reserved.
Terms of use
Privacy Policy
Privacy Settings