The Alliance for Connected Care led a letter asking Congressional Appropriators to include a $14 million request for the Telehealth Resource Centers (TRC) program at the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) in FY2025 appropriations.This increase in funding would provide a critical boost to the TRCs, which saw an 800% increase in demand for telehealth [...]
The Alliance for Connected Care sent a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) regarding ongoing decisions by CMS that will dramatically increase administrative burden for both practitioners offering telehealth services and CMS itself through the requirements for the reporting of multiple addresses for a clinician offering telehealth. CMS currently allows [...]
On behalf of the Alliance for Connected Care and the many patients and clinicians we represent, we write to support the Committee’s leadership in working to avert a pending telehealth cliff for Medicare beneficiaries and support bipartisan passage of the Telehealth Modernization Act of 2024 (H.R.7623). The Alliance for Connected Care sent a letter to [...]
Last week, we finally saw a proposed rule – “Telemedicine Prescribing of Controlled Substances When the Practitioner and the Patient Have not had a Prior In-Person Medical Evaluation” arrive at OMB. We expect that this proposed rule will avert the current end of telehealth prescribing flexibility on December 31, 2024. However, there remains significant risk [...]
Mental Health Groups Sent Letter on Schedule IIN Non-Narcotic Prescribing Mental health groups are pushing the agency to allow Schedule IIN non-narcotic drugs to be prescribed without an in-person visit. Those include stimulants used to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. A coalition of mental health groups, including the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics [...]
Health Affairs: We Need National Policies For Voice-Based Telepsychiatry As of April 2024, no federal legislation or guidance has been implemented to establish permanence for telepsychiatry, and specifically for voice-based visits. With all telehealth flexibilities expiring at the end of 2024, in this piece, authors advocate for the permanent adoption and coverage of VBT, [...]
AARP: Pandemic-Era Trends in Telehealth Use among Americans with Private Health Insurance AARP released a report, which assessed changes in telehealth use from 2019 to 2021 among people younger than 65 who are enrolled in private, employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) plans, which insure nearly two-thirds of Americans under age 65. It also examined how Americans [...]
Kidney Medicine: Patient Perspectives on Using Telemedicine During In-Center Hemodialysis: A Qualitative Study In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States (US) federal government expanded originating telemedicine sites to include outpatient dialysis units. For the first time, nephrology practitioners across the US could replace face-to-face visits with telemedicine for patients receiving in-center [...]
There are many obstacles to mental health care associated with regulatory restrictions on clinicians delivering services across state lines via audio, video, or other telehealth tools—limitations that adversely affect young people who need a doctor’s support while away from their home state for college, work, and travel. The Ruderman Family Foundation commissioned this white [...]
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE): Trends and Disparities in Pandemic Telehealth Use among People with Disabilities This Issue Brief explores telehealth use for people and Medicare beneficiaries with disabilities. The study used data from the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) COVID-19 2021 Winter Supplement and 2022 surveys, ASPE’s Medicare [...]