Make TeleMedicine Permanent

One of the silver linings of the pandemic was the ability to see a doctor and be prescribed medicine online. I used telemedicine multiple times during the pandemic and it was great–telemedicine saved me at least an hour each visit and I think my medical care was as good as if I had been in person. I already knew I had poison ivy! No need for the doctor to get it also.

Telemedicine has been possible for a long time. What allowed it to take off during the pandemic wasn’t new technology but deregulation. HIPAA rules, for example, were waived for good faith use of standard communication technologies such as Zoom and Facetime even though these would ordinarily have been prohibited.

The Federal Ryan Haight Act was lifted which let physicians prescribe controlled substances (narcotics, depressants, stimulants, hallucinogens, and anabolic steroids) in a telemedicine appointment–prior to COVID an in-person appointment was required.

Prior to COVID Medicaid and Medicare wouldn’t pay for many services delivered over the internet. But during the pandemic the list of telemedicine approved services was expanded. Tennessee, for example, allowed speech therapists to bill for an online session. Alaska allowed mental health and counseling services and West Virginia allowed psychological testing to be delivered via telemedicine. Wisconsin allowed durable medical equipment such as prosthetics and orthotics to be prescribed without a face-to-face meeting.

Another very important lifting of regulation was allowing cross-state licensing which let out-of-state physicians have appointments with in-state patients (so long, of course, as the physicians were licensed in their state of residence.)

The kicker is that almost all of these changes are temporary. Regulatory burdens that were lifted for COVID will all be reinstated once the Public Health Emergency (PHE) expires. The PHE has been repeatedly extended but that will only push off the crux of the issue which is whether many of the innovations that we were forced to adopt during the pandemic shouldn’t be made permanent.

Working from home has worked better and been much more popular than anyone anticipated. Not everyone who was forced to work at home because of COVID wants to continue to work at home but many businesses are finding that allowing some work from home as an option is a valuable benefit they can offer their workers without a loss in productivity.

In the same way, many telemedicine innovations pioneered during the pandemic should remain as options. No one doubts that some medical services are better performed in-person nor that requiring in-person visits limits some types of fraud and abuse. Nevertheless, the goal should be to ensure quality by regulating the provider of medical services not regulating how they perform their services. Communications technology is improving at a record pace. We have moved from telephones to Facetime and soon will have even more sophisticated virtual presence technology that can be integrated with next generation Apple watches and Fitbits that gather medical information. We want medical care to build on the progress in other industries and not be bound to 19th and 20th century technology.

The growth of telemedicine is one of the few benefits of the pandemic. As the pandemic ends, let’s make this silver lining permanent.

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