Our Members
The Alliance for Connected Care aims to:
Demonstrate the importance of Connected Care as a tool for improved quality and efficiency.
Build significant and high-level support for Connected Care among leaders in Congress and the Administration.
Enable more telehealth to support new models of care.
Lift geographic and site restrictions for telehealth in Medicare.
Establish a consensus-based, standardized definition of Connected Care to advance with policymakers.
Alliance News
Alliance CY 2025 Medicare Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS)Comments
The Alliance for Connected Care provided comments to the calendar year (CY) 2025 Medicare Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) and Ambulatory Surgical Center (ASC) Payment System proposed rule. As reflected in the comments below, the Alliance urges CMS to recognize payment for genetic counselors providing care virtually, expand its proposal on virtual cardiac rehabilitation, and allow for outpatient reimbursement for RPM care management services. We believe these steps will improve the overall quality of care, lower costs, and improve the experience of Medicare beneficiaries.
Alliance CY 2025 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Comments
The Alliance for Connected Care provided comments to the calendar year (CY) 2025 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) proposed rule. As reflected in the comments below, the Alliance appreciates CMS for ensuring certainty to telehealth access to Medicare beneficiaries to the extent it could. The Alliance is committed to leveraging telehealth and remote patient monitoring to improve quality of care while also lowering costs and improving the clinician experience. The Alliance would like to emphasize the following overarching priorities in advance of our more detailed response: The Alliance supports the CMS proposal for a one-year extension to provide time to [...]
Health Affairs: Telehealth Delivery By Physician And Practice Characteristics
Health Affairs: Telehealth Delivery By Physician And Practice Characteristics Researchers from Cornell examined 2022 Medicare fee-for-service claims to understand how physician characteristics impacted telehealth use. Researchers found that female physicians, primary care physicians, psychiatrists, and physicians in nonrural practices delivered relatively higher proportions of visits via telehealth. Overall, 23 percent of psychiatrists delivered all or nearly all of their visits via telehealth compared with fewer than 1 percent of physicians in other specialties. Evidence suggests that behavioral health care delivered via telehealth is not inferior to in-person care; efforts to expand telehealth coverage for these services may therefore improve [...]
Academic Pediatrics: Social Determinants Pediatric Primary Care Telehealth and In-Office Visits During the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic
Academic Pediatrics: Social Determinants Pediatric Primary Care Telehealth and In-Office Visits During the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic In this retrospective cohort study of children -17 years across 16 sites within Nationwide Children’s Hospital Primary Care Network from March 22nd-July 31st, 2020, researchers compared visit type (in-person vs. telehealth), demographics, presence of individual social needs, and community social determinants, using the Child Opportunity Index 2.0 (COI). The study found that the volume of primary care visits decreased least for high and very high opportunity neighborhoods yet individual social needs were associated with higher relative use of telemedicine. Findings suggest that telehealth was [...]
Nature Digital Medicine: Closing the Gap: Addressing Telehealth Disparities Across Specialties in the Sustained Pandemic Era
Nature Digital Medicine: Closing the Gap: Addressing Telehealth Disparities Across Specialties in the Sustained Pandemic Era Telehealth has surged as a viable solution to reduce no-shows and improve health care accessibility, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, telehealth disparities and its long-term efficacy across various medical specialties remain understudied. This retrospective analysis examined telehealth use and no-shows among outpatient encounters in an Illinois hospital network. Overall, telehealth encounters were associated with reduced no-show odds compared to in-person encounters. Mental health specialty had the highest telehealth usage rate and the highest no-show rates. These results underscore the variability in telehealth use by [...]