New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a Bill late last week, which will take effect as of January 1, expanding telehealth coverage in New York. This law does three things which are on the leading edge of telehealth coverage:
- First, it requires commercial insurance and medical assistance to provide telehealth coverage, which provision is often referred to as “parity legislation” by telehealth providers.
- Second, in defining the originating site for telehealth coverage, it does not exclude a patient’s home. Rather, the new law defines the originating site as “a site at which a patient is located at the time healthcare services are provided to him or her by means of telemedicine or telehealth”. There is no exclusion for a patient’s home.
- Third, it defines telehealth technology as “information and communications technologies consisting of telephones, remote patient monitoring devices or other electronic means which facilitate this assessment, diagnosis, consultation, treatment, education, care management and self management” without specifying that the technology must be either synchronous or asynchronous, thereby allowing the providers and insurers to choose any technology which they believe permits appropriate delivery of care.
