The 2017 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule finalizes the CMS changes for Telehealth reimbursement and coverage for 2017. The CMS fee schedule document also provides a comprehensive explanation of Medicare Telehealth reimbursement and coverage. I have excerpted those 35 pages and linked them as a PDF to this post: Medicare Telehealth Services.
The essential takeaways…
There are two interesting items in telehealth news.
Iowa Supreme Court Rejects Ban on Telemedicine Abortions
An Iowa Board of Medicine rule requires the presence of a physician when abortion inducing drugs are provided. Planned Parenthood sued claiming the requirement of physician presence was unconstitutional on the basis that it discriminated against women, due to…
The Federal District Court of the Western District of Texas has ruled against the Texas Medical Board and granted TelaDoc’s Motion for a Preliminary Injunction prohibiting the Texas Medical Board from enforcing new rules requiring either a face-to-face or an existing physician patient relationship in order to prescribe medication.
The Court rejected the Texas Medical…
House Bill 706 has been introduced in the Pennsylvania House. This is a “parity” bill which does the following:
It defines telehealth in such as way as to neither mandate nor prohibit asynchronous or synchronous telehealth technology. It simply defines telehealth as the remote interaction of the healthcare provider with a patient through the use…
The Ohio State Medical Board has proposed new telehealth prescribing regulations, which are predicated upon whether the drug is a controlled or not a controlled substance.
Non-Controlled Substances
For non-controlled substances, physicians may prescribe or dispense medication to a person on whom the physician has never previously conducted a medical evaluation only if the…
Last week, the American Medical Association (AMA) issued a new report regarding coverage of and payment for telemedicine (CMS Report 7-A-14). The report recognizes the telemedicine is a “key innovation in support of health bill reform, being used in initiatives to improve access to care, care coordination and quality, as well as reduce…
