Telehealth is on a roll this month.
Last Friday, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a bill that makes it much easier for patients to access telehealth services and for practitioners to deliver care remotely. The Telehealth Advancement Act, which takes effect Jan. 1, broadens the state's definition of telehealth providers to include all licensed healthcare professionals and removes the rule that physicians be independently credentialed by every hospital they provide telehealth services to, according to KION-TV, Salinas, Calif.
The law also does away with a requirement that physicians provide the state with documentation that there is a barrier to a patient making an in-person doctor visit and that each patient provide an extra consent form for telemedicine services.
"This new act enables healthcare providers to take better advantage of telehealth technology for preventative and specialized care that will save and enhance the lives of many Californians," Christine Martin, executive director of the California Telemedicine and eHealth Center, says in a press release.
Perhaps the most impressive part is the fact that the legislation was bipartisan, championed by Republican Assembly Member Dan Logue and signed by a Democratic governor after passing without opposition. That speaks to the potential of remote care.
Purely by coincidence, telehealth, wireless and mobile health got another shot in the arm in California and beyond, Gary and Mary West, benefactors of the West Wireless Health Institute near San Diego, announced a long-awaited healthcare investment fund. As MobiHealthNews reports this week, the Wests have committed $100 million to the West Health Investment Fund.
It wasn't the only huge commitment of cash to remote healthcare technologies in October. Last week, the Mercy healthcare system unveiled plans to build a $90 million "virtual care center" near its Chesterfield, Mo., headquarters. The center will allow the Catholic healthcare organization to ramp up round-the-clock telehealth services to its 30 hospitals and more than 200 ambulatory care facilities across four states.
Plans are to expand what Mercy already calls the largest remote ICU in America and to bring telestroke services to all of its emergency departments. The health system has other telehealth services planned, including teleradiology, telepathology, specialist support for primary care, nurses on call via phone or email and, yes, remote disease management. The latter will incorporate various home-based monitoring devices that will automatically connect to an electronic health record.
By the way, Mercy says it will put an additional $590 million into technology to support the telehealth center.
But there's still one key barrier to wider deployment of interstate telehealth services. Many states won't allow remote physicians to deliver services within their boundaries unless the practitioner is licensed in the state where the patient is located. Well, the American Telemedicine Association wants to change that. The organization has launched a petition drive at www.fixlicensure.org to convince Congress and state medical boards to allow license portability for telehealth services. (One tip to the ATA, there hasn't been a "Veterans Administration" since 1989. It's a common mistake, but it doesn't make you look good.)
With the amount of momentum that telehealth has picked up in the last couple of weeks, now is as good a time as any to get to work on changing these archaic restrictions.
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