At the beginning of 2015, CMS began reimbursing physicians for the care they provide to a particular group of their Medicare patients remotely and between visits. This new billing code, called Chronic Care Management (CCM), required that this remote care meet a few criteria, like patients must have two or more chronic conditions; the physician must establish a comprehensive care plan for the...
Recent MobiHealthNews interview subject Proteus Duxbury, director of technology strategy for virtual health services at Englewood, Colo.-based Catholic Health Initiatives, told me that lack of insurance reimbursement is holding back wider adoption of digital technologies. "A lot of [provider] organizations are going to start pulling the plug on some digital health initiatives for that reason,"...
This month, Medicare revealed the list of more than 2,000 hospitals losing up to 2 percent of their funding for failing to sufficiently reduce readmissions. Next year, those penalties can rise even higher.
As troubling as this can be for hospitals, it should be good news for mobile health entrepreneurs, as the wake up call may drive hospitals to explore technology like telehealth, remote patient...
Last August -- almost a year ago now -- The New York Times reported that two insurers had agreed to pay $100 a month in reimbursement for use of WellDoc's mobile-enabled diabetes management program. The report, which sourced WellDoc's president Anand Iyer as its source, expected the payers to begin supporting the "mobile integrated therapy" in early 2013.
This morning WellDoc launched a new...
In a recent blog post about its quarterly funding round-up, San Francisco-based health incubator Rock Health wrote that it's "hearing WellDoc will be the first major acquisition announced in Q2." Given WellDoc's stature in mobile health, such a deal would be quite a story.
MedCity News was sure to mention the prediction in its coverage of Rock Health's funding report and VentureBeat appeared to...
Technology moves too quickly for the world of academic publishing. That's a long held belief by many but also a common topic of conversation among those working in digital health today. How to best study efficacy can be a tricky subject for digital health, however, the argument that efficacy data is unimportant rarely enters the debate -- it is, especially for those companies that hope to...
According to a report in The New York Times this week, two as yet unnamed insurance companies have already agreed to pay more than $100 a month for patients who use WellDoc's DiabetesManager. The reimbursement will not begin until some time early next year, according to the newspaper. The report cites an interview with WellDoc president Anand Iyer as its source.
MobiHealthNews reported late last...
We first encountered plans for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) in early 2010, when many of the center's goals were laid out in a 25 page (mostly mobile) health-focused chapter of the FCC's National Broadband Plan. With the passing of the Affordable Care Act, Congress allocated $10 billion through the year 2019 to fund the creation of what was then called the CMS Innovation...
Photo Credit: Paul Savage Photography
By Padma Nagappan
David Sayen, regional administrator for the western states with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, recalled meeting Rob McCray, president and CEO of WLSA back in 2006 when the iPhone was not even out yet: "Rob talked about wireless technology and I wondered 'what's this guy talking about?'" Sayen recalled during his keynote...
A recent decision by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to start covering preventive screening for depression and alcohol abuse is paving the way for wider use of a mobile app that helps primary care physicians find signs of mental illness that might otherwise be missed.
As part of healthcare reform efforts, CMS said in October that it would pay for annual screenings for both...
