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Telehealth: Are you Taking it Seriously? Or is it a Stop Gap During PHE? Podcast
Join Terry Fletcher on the NSCHBC Edge podcast and Doctor’s Management’s Director of Content Grant Huang as they talk all things telehealth. Huang and Fletcher discuss how to get your practice ready to integrate telehealth for your patients during this public health emergency, and how practices can prepare to adopt telehealth post- PHE when Medicare PFS changes and the CARES Act flexibility rolls back.
Telehealth has become a hot button issue for many medical practices as they have had to rapidly integrate new telehealth technologies into their businesses to continue to care for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fletcher and Huang discuss how many of the audio and visual technologies adopted for telehealth only have temporary HIPAA protection under the CARES Act, and although extensions continue to be made to the timeline of how long these protections will last, eventually the 2021 Medicare PFS will change and the CARES Act flexibility will roll back. This will only happen once the PHE ends but it will have an incredible impact on telehealth usage post-COVID 19.
Huang believes that a practice’s decision to continue to use telehealth technologies or not will happen mostly on an individual level, where practices must take their own patients’ preferences into account, as well as other factors such as budget. Practices will also have to be on the lookout for more legislation which may greatly impact the rules and standards of telehealth technology usage. Practices may have to buy approved technologies to continue their telehealth practices, or use packages to update the technologies they already use, such as FaceTime and Skype, so that they are on a HIPPA approved platform.
Fletcher and Huang also discuss another large factor practices must take into account when determining their future usage of telemedicine:
Medicare.
Before the PHE, telehealth was a benefit included in most medicare coverage, but was frustrating to professionals, practices, billers, and coders due to the large disparity in coverage guidelines for adoption and implementation. Huang believes that in the future, this will drastically change as providers will have to homogenize the process, such as with what is covered and how to report telehealth usage. Due to the PHE, a new streamlined telehealth process is being created, and this is something for practices to take into account when determining if they will continue to rely heavily on telemedicine.
Huang believes that practices who want to keep a strong percentage of telehealth will have to reflect on its success, determining if it was embraced by providers and patients and if it will be an important part of their service mix moving forward. Most importantly, practices will have to determine if they will be able to comply with updated guidelines on how to deliver telehealth services.
Telehealth isn’t going out of fashion anytime soon, but these are the factors that must be taken into consideration as practices move forward during the PHE and have to determine if their adoption of telehealth will stay as an active service long after COVID-19.
The NSCHBC Edge Podcast is available on all platforms and new episodes will air the second Tuesday of every month!
Release ID: 88998458