The COVID-19 pandemic reset expectations of Medicare telehealth coverage, prompting a letter from dozens of members of Congress to Capitol Hill leadership asking for legislation that will memorialize telehealth benefits. But concerns over spending, fraud and abuse still hang over the discussion.
The problems with U.S. Medicare coverage for medical software are well known, but the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission recently indicated that these problems are largely manageable for services delivered via managed care plans.
At the American College of Cardiology's (ACC) 24th Annual Scientific Session held this week in Atlanta, SHL Telemedicine Ltd. reported the full results of the Imperial College London TELE-ACS trial, the results of which were also published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
The COVID-19 pandemic is well known for increasing telehealth utilization, including remote patient monitoring, but there are still issues with payer coverage policies even a year after the formal end of the public health emergency for COVID.
Advocates are pressing the U.S. Congress to pass legislation to require more Medicare coverage of telehealth and telemedicine, but the Office of Inspector General (OIG) continues to report instances of fraud in this area. OIG reported July 24 that government attorneys had forced a guilty plea out of a telemedicine provider who has agreed to pay $44 million to deal with charges of fraud perpetrated over a period of three and a half years.
The U.S. Office of Inspector General (OIG) reported June 28 that it had launched a series of enforcement actions against perpetrators of a variety of forms of health care fraud, including in the areas of telemedicine and opioid abuse. The 78 individuals arraigned in this crackdown are said to be responsible for $2.5 billion.
Proponents of telehealth have been pressing Congress to statutorily broaden coverage of telehealth since before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Telehealth Expansion Act of 2023 carries the weight of at least some of these expectations. The House Ways and Means Committee’s health subcommittee recently voted 30-12 to pass along the legislation to the full committee, but the bill operates principally to allow high-deductible health plans to cover telehealth benefits before the enrollee has met the deductible, leaving a substantial amount of telehealth terrain unaddressed.
France is tightening access to the reimbursed health care market for digital medical devices. The national Digital Healthcare Agency (ANS) reported that a standard interoperability and safety system for digital medical devices is coming into force.
Drones are now being used for medical consultations and facilitating remote diagnosis, potentially leveraging telemedicine technology to improve health care outcomes in remote locations that cannot be easily accessed. Telemedicine consultations using aerial drones are about to become commonplace in Pakistan, and possibly around the world, according to Shariq Khoja, CEO of Tech4Life Enterprises.
Nuralogix Corp. is taking its selfie-based health monitoring platform to the next level, offering continuous health and vital signs tracking during video calls. The launch of Anura Telehealth is the newest addition its Anura app, which uses video cameras on smartphones and other consumer devices to extract facial blood flow information and provide a personalized snapshot of health and wellness.
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