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11/19/14

Healthcare: Telehealth/Telemedicine: An Opportunity for Physicians and Providers to Add a New Line of Service

The cost effectiveness of providing health care via telemedicine or telehealth promises to be an effective tool to increase coverage and reimbursement of healthcare provided remotely or through telehealth. Towers Watson, a national consulting company, recently published a 2014 study that suggests that telemedicine could save $6 billion annually for the US health care industry.

“Achieving this savings requires a shift in patient and physician mindsets, health plan willingness to integrate and reimburse such services, and regulatory support in all states,” according to Dr. Allan Khoury, a senior consultant at Towers Watson.

What is Telemedicine/Telehealth? :

 Simply defining telemedicine can be tricky, as there is no single definition. CMS defines “telemedicine” as the “provision of clinical services to patients by practitioners from a distance via electronic communications.”

The American Telemedicine Association (“ATA”), a nonprofit organization dedicated to integrating telemedicine into health care systems, defines it as “the use of medical information exchanged from one site to another via electronic communications to improve a patient’s clinical health status.

The American Medical Association (“AMA”) approved “guiding principles” regarding telemedicine in June, but offered no single definition. The AMA report instead addresses telemedicine within three broad categories of telemedicine technologies: store-and-forward telemedicine, remote monitoring telemedicine, and real-time interactive telemedicine services.

Read more: Telehealth/Telemedicine: An Opportunity for Physicians and Providers to Add a New Line of Service | The National Law Review

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