Dive Brief:
- A coalition of 13 groups has sent a letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee urging legislators to expand Medicare coverage for telehealth services under the panel's "21st Century Cures" initiative. Signatories include the American Telemedicine Association, IT trade group HIMSS and the Telecommunications Industry Association.
- The groups are asking lawmakers to expand Medicaid coverage of telemedicine for accountable care organizations, critical access hospitals, federally qualified health centers and for remote monitoring of patients with conditions such as congestive heart failure and diabetes. The group also wants to see Medicare cover telehealth as part of the bundled payments program, as well as pay for video visits and remote monitoring for beneficiaries such as home-based kidney dialysis patients.
- In addition, the group's members want to see lawmakers take steps to support the growth of telemedicine, including amending current restrictions for Medicare telehealth service reimbursements from the Social Security Act. They'd also like to see a CBO analysis of the costs and benefits of expanding Medicare coverage of telehealth during the fourth quarter of 2014.
Dive Insight:
The groups in this coalition must sense that telehealth is inching towards its moment in the sun, and that legislators are likely to consider substantial changes to how Medicare pays for telehealth. It's worth noting that, if Medicare were to give the group everything it wants, the federal health plan would probably be well ahead of the commercial sector, which has begun to pay for telemedicine but hasn't gotten too far in the process.
The force behind this new drive for telehealth services seems to be the ACA which, with its push to reduce healthcare costs, has refocused attention on the cost-savings benefits of telemedicine. As Healthcare Dive noted recently, health plans and employers are showing a new willingness to pay for telemedicine as well. And what's more, independent commercial telemedicine companies such as Teladoc, which just received $100 million in venture capital, are being pushed into the spotlight. This is clearly the season of growth telemedicine advocates had been waiting for for many years.