-mHealth Intelligence
“The Medical University of South Carolina has been named a Telehealth Center of Excellence, and given a three-year federal grant to become a model for telehealth and telemedicine programs across the country.
The Health and Human Services Department’s Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) announced the designation on Oct. 3, along with a $600,000-a-year grant to help MUSC develop its program, which now serves some 200 sites across the state.”
–Fierce Healthcare
“After telehealth providers offered up free services to victims of Hurricane Harvey last week, the telehealth community is replicating the same approach as Hurricane Irma churns through Florida.
–Medscape
President Trump today announced that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will soon roll out a new virtual visit service called VA Video Connect along with a new smartphone app for appointment scheduling. VA Video Connect will allow any VA physician to conduct a telehealth visit with any veteran anywhere in the country, either on a mobile device or on a computer.
“This will significantly expand access to care to our veterans, especially for those who need help in the area of mental health, which is a bigger and bigger request, and also in suicide prevention,” Trump said in a press conference at VA headquarters. “It will make a tremendous difference for the veterans in rural locations in particular.”
-MUSC News Room-Mickie Hayes
“Seconds matter. When a critically ill or injured child or patient suffering an ischemic stroke is rushed to an emergency room for care, time is of the essence.
And while emergency room personnel never know exactly what a day may hold in store for them, they want to be ready for any contingency. Sometimes, however, that just might not be possible.
With today’s health care economic realities, most community and rural hospitals can’t afford to have their own dedicated specialists like pediatric critical care intensivists or stroke experts – highly trained doctors who are typically the best qualified and experienced to treat the most critically ill patients.
Today, however, MUSC can put those experts virtually at the bedside of patients throughout the state.
Through the MUSC Health Center for Telehealth, in addition to hospital-based programs, there are several outpatient programs where urgent, primary and specialty care is delivered to patients at virtually any location, even their homes, using MUSC’s mobile health technologies.”
-The Post and Courier
For three hours every week, a psychiatrist sees low-income, often uninsured patients at Volunteers in Medicine on Hilton Head Island. Yet it’s not enough.
The clinic, which relies on volunteers and schedules more than 30,000 visits per year, has had to stop scheduling new consultations.
Doug Wolter, a clinical psychologist and director of the clinic’s mental health services, said Volunteers in Medicine has been overwhelmed with the number of patients who need this treatment.
So a partnership was built with the Medical University of South Carolina to allow Charleston psychiatrists to see the clinic’s patients via telecommunication. Wolter said for these patients, telemedicine could make a significant difference in their mental health care.
“It could be of a tremendous benefit to some rural areas where there is not access to medical specialists,” he said.
-American Academy of Family Physicians
Telehealth offers the promise of expanding access to health care, but its use remains limited among family physicians, some of whom report barriers to greater adoption, according to a recent survey.
Researchers at the Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Family Medicine and Primary Care surveyed family physicians to find out how they are using telehealth services and what obstacles stood in the way of expanding use of those services. Results were published in an article(www.jabfm.org)titled “Family Physicians Report Considerable Interest in, but Limited Use of, Telehealth Services” in the May-June issue of the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.
-mHealth Intelligence
“The Hallways to Health Act, first proposed in 2016, would help school districts launch telehealth partnerships with community health centers and create a telehealth demonstration project.
Two Michigan senators have re-introduced a bill that aims to boost telehealth services in schools by connecting them with community health centers and providing more avenues for reimbursement.
The Hallways to Health Act, co-sponsored by Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, would also create a demonstration project to expand telehealth access in schools and in medically underserved areas.”
The South Carolina Telehealth Alliance (SCTA) has allocated funds for five $20,000 awards for
telehealth1-based pilot projects that aim to accelerate the adoption, utilization, and investigation of
telehealth interventions across South Carolina. This funding is intended to provide assistance to
South Carolina clinicians and researchers in their efforts to develop, implement, and evaluate
telehealth solutions. Preference will be given to applications for projects that have 1) the potential
to be scalable and sustainable, 2) save costs while improving care, 3) are in line with the healthcare
needs of South Carolina, and 4) aim to improve the equitable distribution of telehealth services
across South Carolina.
-MHealth Intelligence
A telemedicine program born at the University of New Mexico is set to become a national model for pushing healthcare into remote and underserved regions.
The Senate on Tuesday approved by a 97-0 vote S. 2873, the Expanding Capacity for Health Outcomes (ECHO) Act. The bill places UNM’s five-year-old groundbreaking Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) on a national stage, setting the wheels in motion for a national network of hub-and-spoke telemedicine platforms to provide education and collaboration opportunities for healthcare providers in hard-to-reach areas.
-David Craig, MD
Welcome to the second half of our series on MACRA! We’re going to spend this whole post on what MACRA means for telehealth, so if you need to catch up on the basics of what the new law is and what it means for Medicare reimbursement in general, please check out part one first and then meet me back here.
If you’re already up to speed on MACRA 101, though, and you’re ready for a nitty-gritty deep-dive on what the new legislation might mean for telehealth and especially for telehealth reimbursement, then let’s get started.
Palmetto Care Connections (PCC) is the telehealth network for South Carolina that offers telehealth support services to rural and underserved health care providers.
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