According to American Well CEO Roy Schoenberg, telemedicine regulation is something of a paradox: Everyone in government agrees it’s a good thing, yet it’s challenging to actually get laws passed.
“I think there is growing critical mass in Washington that understands that telehealth is one of those rare rare things that even for politicians end up being a tremendous asset,” Schoenberg told...
While the Senate’s efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act imploded last week, that hasn’t stopped lawmakers from introducing bills that would make tweaks to the healthcare system in smaller ways. One such bill, sponsored by Reps. Doris Matsui, (D-California), and Bill Johnson, (R-Ohio), would expand the use of telemedicine to reduce costs.
The bill, the Evidence-Based Telehealth...
04:33 pm
March 9, 2017
West Virginia delegates approved a telehealth bill on Monday with a vote of 95-4 that would expand access to mental and behavioral healthcare medications in rural areas. The bill now heads to the state senate for another vote.
House Bill 2509 would allow providers to prescribe certain medications through the use of telemedicine.
Currently, state laws prohibit providers from prescribing certain...
This article has been updated with comments from Opternative and the Virginia House of Delegates.
In stark contrast to the law that past last year in South Carolina, the state of Virginia has proactively passed a pro-telemedicine bill that protects the rights of optometrists and ophthalmologists to see patients and issue prescriptions via telemedicine.
The law, signed late last month, states that...
In Arkansas, currently the only state in the nation that does not allow telemedicine companies like Teladoc or American Well to treat patients, a proposed telemedicine rule that would have made remote visits more permissible was stalled when a key legislative panel declined to sign off, Politico's Morning eHealth reported.
Arkansas is ranked last in the nation in telemedicine practice standards...
The regulatory battles for telemedicine continue to play out slowly in state legislatures across the country. This week, Mississippi's medical board shelved a rule that would have put strict limits on telemedicine usage while Colorado's state medical board updated draft guidelines that will determine what doctors are and aren't allowed to do via telemedicine. And the interstate compact proposed...
Video doctor visits have the potential to help many different kinds of patients, but elderly patients, who are sometimes homebound or have trouble driving, would seem like a natural fit -- including the more than 50 million Americans on Medicare. However, according to a new report from Kaiser Health News, fewer than 1 percent of Medicare beneficiaries use video visit technology, owing mostly to a...
Rep. Cecile Bledsoe
Shortly after the Arkansas House of Representatives rejected a bill that would have allowed telemedicine companies to offer services within the state, the House has passed a more limited bill, which had already cleared the Senate, increasing the allowable range of telemedicine services.
The new bill, SB133, is more restrictive than the one that was previously voted down. It...
Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.)
Representatives Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) and Glenn Thompson (R-Penn.) are set to announce a new telehealth bill soon. Like some of Mike Thompson's previous telehealth efforts, the bill seeks to amend the Title XVIII of the Social Security Act, the law that has long limited government-reimbursed telemedicine to rural areas and specific use cases.
As Jonathan...
Teladoc was one of the many signatories on one of the letters recently sent to incoming HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell.
After efforts to remove restrictions from CMS coverage of telehealth through legislative channels have stalled, telehealth stakeholders have sent a barrage of open letters to incoming US Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell, urging her to use her newfound...
