Healthcare IT News: Broadband access, outdated laws among hurdles to equitable telehealth, says NCQA The National Committee for Quality Assurance this week released a white paper exploring the root causes of disparities in virtual care access. The report, which grew out of an NCQA roundtable discussion on the future of telehealth, outlines existing barriers to equity and recommendations for [...]
Centers for Disease Control & Prevention: National Health Statistics Report Shows Telemedicine Use in Children Age 0-17 The CDC found that, in the second half of 2020, only 14.1 percent of children used telehealth due to the pandemic, but use was higher among those with asthma, a developmental condition, or a disability. In total, about 12.6 [...]
Medical Economics: How primary care used telehealth to keep treating patients during the pandemic According to a Primary Care Collaborative (PCC) report, primary care physicians quickly pivoted to telehealth at the beginning of the pandemic. In April 2020, the number of clinicians reporting that their patients were unable to access telehealth services due to lack of [...]
Yale School of Medicine: Telehealth Improves Access to Cochlear Implants—a Boon for Those with Severe Hearing Loss The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved remote programming for cochlear implants in 2017, but there were various governmental restrictions and regulations that made it difficult to implement. In response to COVID-19, however, the federal government rapidly removed such [...]
Penn Medicine News: Racial Gap in Completed Doctor Visits Disappeared in 2020 as Telemedicine Adopted A Penn Medicine study found that as COVID-19 necessitated the wider adoption of telemedicine, the rate of completed primary care visits for Black patients rose to the same level of non-Black patients. The study showed that completed primary care visits rose from [...]
Federation of State Medical Boards: The Appropriate Use of Telemedicine Technologies in the Practice of Medicine The Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) updated its guidance to state medical boards for regulating the use of telemedicine technologies in the practice of medicine, while raising awareness for licensees and patients alike as to the appropriate standards of care [...]
Kaiser Family Foundation: PrEP Access in the United States: The Role of Telehealth Telehealth to provide pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and associated services (“tele-PrEP”) has been a trend that began before the COVID-19 pandemic. This issue brief provided an overview of the tele-PrEP landscape, including how PrEP services (e.g., initial consults, lab work, prescribing, and ongoing [...]
Healthcare IT News: Telehealth can play a vital role in reducing carbon emissions The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center built a dashboard to estimate the environmental impact of the medical facility's telehealth offerings. Researchers found that telehealth appointments saved 2.2 million gallons of gas for patients since the start of the pandemic. Since the onset of [...]
Health Affairs: Medicare and Telehealth – Delivering on Innovation’s Promise for Equity, Quality, Access and Sustainability The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly changed health care. Policy makers and health care leaders must evaluate the lessons learned from the pandemic and leverage telehealth innovations with an eye toward how such changes can advance health equity; drive high-quality, high-value, [...]
Advisory Board: Telehealth did not lead to more follow-up care, study finds. Here’s why that matters Telehealth patients did not require more follow-up care than in-person patients according to a new study published in JAMA Network Open, suggesting these findings may help shape telehealth policies moving forward. Telehealth patients with chronic conditions, such as hypertension or heart failure, [...]