Alliance Joins Letter In Support of the States Handling Access to Reciprocity for Employment (SHARE) Act
The Alliance for Connected Care joined over 20 organizations in a stakeholder letter supporting the States Handling Access to Reciprocity for Employment (SHARE) Act (H.R. 1310). The bill would authorize the use of FBI criminal history record information for administration of interstate compacts.
Read the letter here or below:
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Open in new tab Alliance for Connected Care Announces New Members and Leadership
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACT
Chris Adamec; cadamec@connectwithcare.org
Alliance for Connected Care Announces New Members and Leadership
WASHINGTON, D.C. February 13, 2024 – Today, the Alliance for Connected Care (“the Alliance”) welcomes several clinician and patient advocacy organizations to its membership, and a new Executive Director. During this critical policy year for telehealth and remote patient monitoring, it is essential to have a wide range of leading voices together in a coalition. With patients, hospital systems, physicians, nurses, technology innovators, retailers and health plans as members, the Alliance truly speaks with a cross-sector voice.
Additionally, Chris Adamec will take over as executive director of the Alliance, continuing to drive forward coalition advocacy to ensure patients have access to, and clinicians are reimbursed for virtual care. With more than 15 years of experience in Washington, and four years with the Alliance, Mr. Adamec has relationships across the stakeholder spectrum, in Congress, the Executive Branch and deeply understands the policy.
Founder, Krista Drobac, will continue to serve the Alliance through strategic guidance and thought leadership. “As the Alliance celebrates its 10-year anniversary, we have seen unprecedented progress in access to telehealth, and Chris is the best person to take this uniquely positioned group into the next chapter. Over the last four years, Chris has impressively led the Alliance’s advocacy on the Hill, the Administration, and with stakeholders. I am confident that the Alliance will grow and flourish in his capable hands,” said Krista Drobac, Founder of the Alliance for Connected Care.
Following are new Alliance for Connected Care members in 2024:
- Alzheimer’s Foundation
- American Academy of Neurology
- American Academy of Physician Associates
- American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy
- American Association of Nurse Practitioners
- American Association of Suicidology
- American Heart Association
- American Osteopathic Association
- American Physical Therapy Association
- Association for Behavioral Health and Wellness
- Compassion & Choices
- National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN)
- PAN Foundation
“I am thrilled to expand our membership with additional clinician specialty and patient advocacy voices, to enhance and elevate our work ensuring continued access to care provided through telehealth and remote patient monitoring,” said Chris Adamec, executive director of the Alliance. “Simple to access and simple to bill virtual care is key to our shared goals of expanding access to safe, high-quality health care.”
As telehealth and remote patient monitoring continues to be integrated into the standard of care, it is important to include the clinician perspective as they ensure patients receive safe, high-quality care using connected care technology. The Alliance is dedicated to creating a statutory and regulatory environment to ensure continued use of telehealth and remote patient monitoring.
Several new Alliance members offered comments on joining the Alliance:
“The PAN Foundation was part of the Alliance advisory board where we supported the Alliance’s efforts to push for policies that ensure continued access to telehealth services. Today, we are thrilled to join the Alliance as a member as we continue our efforts advocating for permanent telehealth polices, including audio-only services, to increase equitable access for all.” Amy Niles, Chief Advocacy and Engagement Officer, PAN Foundation
“The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy was part of the Alliance advisory board. As an organization representing the professional interests of over 70,000 licensed marriage and family therapists, we are excited to join the Alliance as a member and support the mission for permanent access to virtual care for behavioral health providers and other clinicians.” Roger D. Smith, J.D., Chief Advocacy Officer & General Counsel, American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy
“Compassion & Choices proudly served on the Alliance advisory board to help address the need for permanent telehealth access for terminally ill patients. As the nation’s oldest and largest nonprofit organization working to improve end-of-life care, we are eager to join the Alliance as a member to advocate for easier patient healthcare access through telehealth.” Bernadette Nunley, National Director of Policy, Compassion & Choices
“The Association for Behavioral Health and Wellness (ABHW), which represents health payers who provide mental health and substance use disorder benefits to over 200 million people, is delighted to join the Alliance. We are especially looking forward to working with our Alliance partners on ensuring that buprenorphine can be prescribed through telehealth and eliminating the six-month in-person requirement for tele-mental health care.” Pamela Greenberg, President & CEO, Association for Behavioral Health and Wellness
“The American Academy of Physician Associates, representing more than 168,000 PAs, is honored to be a part of the Alliance for Connected Care. PAs are driven by a commitment to expanding patient access to high-quality medical care, and telehealth is a powerful tool for ensuring more patients get the care they need, when they need it.” Tate Heuer, Vice President, Federal Advocacy, American Academy of Physician Associates
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The Alliance is dedicated to creating a statutory and regulatory environment in which patients can receive and providers can deliver safe, high-quality care using connected care technology. Our members are leading health care and technology organizations from across the spectrum, representing health providers and systems, health payers, technology innovators, and patient and clinician organizations who wish to better utilize the opportunities created by telehealth and remote patient monitoring. For more information, please visit https://www.connectwithcare.org.
Alliance for Connected Care Opposes Duplicate Coding for Telehealth Services
The Alliance for Connected Care sent a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) regarding the consideration of new telehealth codes as proposed by the American Medical Association (AMA) in 2023.
The AMA Relative Value Scale Update (RUC) Committee in May proposed 17-20 new telehealth codes to be considered in the CMS Medicare Telehealth Services List. The Alliance and its members oppose the creation of new telehealth codes that duplicate services already covered by the Medicare program for the following reasons:
- Telehealth is a modality of care, not a different service. It is therefore inappropriate for CMS to adopt multiple codes for the same service.
- Telehealth has expanded access to care for underserved and rural populations. The complexity and potential payment variation created by duplicate codes would hinder CMS’s health equity priorities.
- The 17 new codes would leave out 200 services and outpatient codes which telehealth is currently used as a modality for.
- There could be significant patient access and operational impacts as the new codes are adopted.
Read the full letter here, or below.
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Alliance for Connected Care Urges AMA to Ensure Coding for RPM and RTM Accurately Represents Clinical Utilization
The Alliance for Connected Care sent a letter to the American Medical Association’s (AMA) CPT Editorial Panel in response to its February 2024 meeting agenda, which includes Tab 50 – Remote Monitoring. The public agenda seems to indicate major revisions to remote physiologic monitoring (RPM) and remote therapeutic monitoring (RTM).
The Alliance is concerned that the revisions to RPM and RTM codes because we do not believe these changes would improve a clinician’s ability to manage care and we are concerned with downstream implications of this change – such as the potential exacerbation of concerns with appropriate utilization and practice expense calculations for the relevant device codes.
The Alliance would like to emphasize four overarching themes around which our response is based:
- The Alliance appreciates the proposal to simplify RPM and RTM coding. However, given the significance of the change, we strongly believe the panel should not finalize this proposal without significant additional input and potential modifications from a wider range of stakeholders.
- The Alliance believes that RPM and RTM should remain separate for the time being due to different clinical use cases, the evolving nature of the technologies involved, and the relatively new nature of RTM coverage.
- The Alliance and its members are concerned with current and potential restrictions on overlapping RPM/RTM services across multiple clinicians and different monitoring services and the implications of this change on those concerns. We believe that simplifying coding like the application proposes would make it harder for payers to support multiple clinicians providing clinically distinct services, exacerbating this ongoing challenge.
- While the Alliance agrees that RPM and RTM coding could be simplified and improved, we believe there are other priorities to consider in this conversation, such as addressing uncompensated care for the 20-minute threshold for reimbursement, changes to the calculation of direct practice expense, and coding to support the reporting of multiple medical devices for different conditions.
Read the full letter here, or below.
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CMS Response to Alliance’s Comments
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Alliance Submits Statement for the Record for Senate Finance Health Subcommittee Hearing on Medicare Telehealth Permanency
The Alliance for Connected Care submitted a statement for the record to the Senate Finance Committee, Subcommittee on Health for the hearing, “Ensuring Medicare Beneficiary Access: A Path to Telehealth Permanency.”
The Alliance focused its comments on:
- Recommendations for a permanent telehealth expansion that Congress should consider, including steps to ensure equitable access;
- Other non-Medicare recommendations that we believe Congress should prioritize; and
- While we generally do not believe additional telehealth guardrails are needed, we offer some options that would be operationally feasible for health care organizations to implement without significantly disrupting patient access to care.
Read the full letter here, or below.
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Alliance and Over 110 Organizations Request CMS to Ensure Telehealth Practitioners Privacy Are Protected
The Alliance for Connected Care, in partnership with the American Telemedicine Association, led 112 organizations in a letter requesting that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to take action on preserving the benefits of telehealth by ensuring telehealth practitioners working from a home-based (or other) location do not need to report that private residence to the federal government for purposes of either enrollment or billing.
Currently, CMS allows practitioners to render telehealth services from their home without reporting their home address on their Medicare enrollment or billing paperwork. This will end on December 31, 2023. The current location-based enrollment structure is outdated and does not support providers new operational and privacy concerns faced in a digital age.
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Alliance Leads 170 Organizations in a Letter Supporting the Telehealth Expansion Act
The Alliance for Connected Care led a letter urging House and Senate leaders to support the passage of the Telehealth Expansion Act of 2023 (H.R. 1843/S. 1001). This is legislation which the House Ways & Means Committee advanced on a bipartisan basis earlier this year.
The Telehealth Expansion Act of 2023 is a bipartisan, bicameral bill that would make permanent the pandemic-era policy that enabled employers to provide telehealth services on a pre-deductible basis to individuals with high-deductible health plans coupled with a health savings account (HDHP-HSA). The bill would ensure this critical telehealth flexibility continues for the more than 32 million Americans with these plans on a permanent basis beyond the current extension through December 31, 2024. This commonsense policy has helped ensure families could access vital telehealth services – including virtual primary care and behavioral health services – prior to having to meet their deductible. In fact, according to a survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), about 96 percent of employers adopted pre-deductible coverage for telehealth services as a result of this pandemic-era provision.
For more information and the Alliance’s advocacy on this policy, please click here.
Read the Senate Letter, signed by 170 organizations here:
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Read the House Letter, signed by over 170 organizations here:
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Social Media
170 organizations urged Senate leadership to support the Telehealth Expansion Act of 2023 (S. 1001/H.R. 1843). The Telehealth Expansion Act would allow #employers/health plans to provide covered #telehealth services to individuals with a high-deductible #health plan coupled with a health savings account (HDHP-HSA) before their deductible is met. The policy is currently set to expire December 31, 2024.
By the end of 2024, more than 32 million Americans with a high-deductible health plan coupled with a Health Savings Account (HDHP-HSA) will lose access to pre-deductible #telehealth services. 170 organizations urged Senate leadership to support the Telehealth Expansion Act of 2023 (S. 1001/H.R. 1843). Read the letter here: https://connectwithcare.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/October-2023-HDHP-Letter-Senate-FINAL-October-18-2023.pdf
Alliance Submits Comments on How Telehealth Can Boost Access to Care in Rural America
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The Alliance for Connected Care submitted comments to the House Ways & Means Committee request for information (RFI) on ways to incentivize access to care in rural America.
Please find the full comments below or here.
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Alliance Highlights the Importance of a Special Registration to Allow Continuity of Care for Patients
The Alliance for Connected Care appreciated the opportunity to testify for the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) listening session on prescribing controlled substances via telemedicine on September 12, 2023.
We appreciate the DEA’s quick response during the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) to allow prescribing via telemedicine. This was also a hugely meaningful expansion of access for Americans who had other barriers to accessing care. These include individuals who are frail, homebound or lack transportation, who live in areas with provider shortages, people of all kinds whose caregiving responsibilities serve as a barrier to care. We strongly support the development and implementation of a permanent policy for the prescribing of controlled substances though telemedicine to ensure these individuals do not lose access – as these are not challenges which will go away.
In our testimony, the Alliance discussed the importance of a special registration as the primary guardrail to identify and mitigate the risks of diversion in the prescribing of controlled substances through telehealth, and discuss implementation concerns for any proposed regulation.
Read the full testimony here.
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For more information and the Alliance’s advocacy on this policy, please click here.