U.S. Senate Health Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN) this week weighed in on the topic of telehealth.
Alexander said the government should permanently extend at least two of the most important temporary changes in federal policy made to help patients see doctors by phone or video during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“As dark as this pandemic event has been, it creates an opportunity to learn from and act upon these three months of intensive telehealth experiences, specifically what permanent changes need to be made in federal and state policies,” Alexander said in a press release on his government website.
Alexander said the federal government should permanently extend policy changes that allowed physicians to get reimbursed for a telehealth appointment wherever the patient is located, including the patient’s home. He also said the feds should permanently extend the policy change that nearly doubled the number of telehealth services that Medicare could reimburse. He said there were 29 other temporary federal policy changes that the feds can consider to make permanent.
Alexander made his remarks this week during the Senate Health Committee hearing – “Telehealth: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic” – which featured testimony from telehealth experts about the rapid shift in response to COVID-19 from in-person doctor visits to health care being provided virtually.
“In 2016, there were almost 884 million visits nationwide between patients and physicians, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” Alexander said.
“If 15-20 percent of those were to become remote permanently due to telehealth expansion during COVID-19 – that would produce a massive change in our health care system. Our job should be to ensure that change is done with the goals of better outcomes and better patient experiences at a lower cost.”
Alexander said part of this explosion in remote meetings between patients and physicians is possible because temporary changes in federal and state policies made it so.
“The private sector, too, has made important changes. One purpose of this hearing is to find out which of these temporary changes in federal policy should be maintained, modified, or reversed – and also to find out if there are any additional federal policies that would help patients and health care providers take advantage of delivering medical services using telehealth,” Alexander said.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Go away Lamar.