This is not a story about COVID-19, although COVID-19 is a key catalyst. This is the story of a new healthcare ecosystem, which will allow the development of new, diverse and creative healthcare experiences.
Today I can acquire a user on Facebook, give them access to physicians via partnership with Wheel, have medicines seamlessly shipped to their homes via Truepill [Editor's note: Hogg is a...
The journal Health Affairs is widely regarded as a key forum for conversations about health policy. This month, Health Affairs published a special issue with 20 research papers, editorials and analyses around the broad topic of telehealth, including synchronous and asynchronous telemedicine as well as remote patient monitoring.
Of note, the journal is not a cheerleader for the field; in fact, it'...
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services came out with a final rule yesterday that would require face-to-face visits prior to home health services for Medicaid patients, a rule that already exists for Medicare patients. But, as Politico spotted, the rule also includes a parenthetical allowing those "face-to-face" visits to be conducted via telehealth.
Exactly what constitutes telehealth isn...
This week the American Telemedicine Association's annual event is taking place in Los Angeles and apart from the important pair of policy-focused reports the ATA published (more on that below), the other news coming out of the event so far is that American Well has expanded its scope and is now working to convince physicians to use its platform to connect with their existing patients.
While...
AARP seeks health startups for LivePitch event in Boston: AARP is hosting an event in Boston in May that will include an Innovation@50+ LivePitch session for digital health startups focused on the "50 and over" population. The event is looking for both very early stage startups in the "concept phase" as well as those that are a bit further along and have raised money but not more than $5 million...
Over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced a number of incremental changes to how they will cover telehealth services in 2014. The American Telemedicine Association spends a lot of effort each year pushing CMS toward incremental change and wider coverage of telehealth. For 2014, the ATA sees a few important changes coming for Medicare patients...
Barriers to reimbursement for telehealth services are falling, slowly.
One of the most recent victories came in Massachusetts, where lawmakers this summer approved a general appropriations bill that included Medicaid reimbursement for remote monitoring services in patient homes. This action, passed over a veto by Gov. Deval Patrick, makes Massachusetts the 12th state to approve Medicaid payments...
Video consultation provider American Well's iPhone app
As expected, the Department of Veterans Affairs plans to do away with copays for in-home telehealth services in an effort to increase access to the services for veterans with health conditions, who are frail or have difficulty traveling to healthcare facilities. According to the VA's notice in the Federal Register, unless the department...
