How Maine and New Hampshire Passed Laws Mandating Private Insurance Reimbursement for Telemedicine

Both Maine and New Hampshire in the Summer of 2009 passed laws which require insurance companies to pay for services delivered by telemedicine. For the benefit of other states who may ponder such a step, a new article on the TIE by Michael Edwards of the Northeast Telehealth Resource Center shares details about the similarities and differences in the laws and discuss some of what we know about how these laws got through the state legislatures.

New Federal Legislation Impacts Telemedicine

On July 9th, the Senate passed the comprehensive Medicare legislation. This legislation with a number of important issues of importance to the Medicare community will also expand the list of telehealth originating sites to include hospital-based renal dialysis centers, skilled nursing facilities, and community mental health centers. The vote was the second attempt at passing this legislation after a vote for cloture failed in June. The legislation has been vetoed by President Bush. However, both the House and the Senate passed the measure with sufficient margins to override a veto and it is likely that it will be overridden. In other legislation, the Senate and House spending bills will boost telehealth funding. Both the Senate and House appropriations committees released FY 2009 spending bills that will increase funding for the Office for the Advancement of Telehealth (OAT)to $7,100,000 from a FY 2008 level of $6,700,000, while the Senate bill would increase OAT funding to a full $8,000,000. More information can be found here.

Telehealth Community Asked to Urge Congress to pass the Medicare Telehealth Improvement Act, S. 2812

The telehealth community is asked to urge Congress to pass the Medicare Telehealth Improvement Act, S. 2812. This federal telehealth legislation was introduced on April 3 by Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) and is currently co-sponsored by Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and John Thune (R-SD).

S. 2812 would expand the existing Medicare telehealth program in several important ways.

First, the bill would increase the list of eligible originating sites to include skilled nursing facilities, dialysis centers and community mental health centers. In addition to improving care in these facilities, there are significant cost savings achieved by avoiding transporting medically fragile patients.

Second, S. 2812 would expand the list of authorized providers in the Medicare telehealth program to include physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, audiologists and diabetes educators.

Finally, S. 2812 would improve the process of reviewing services to determine if they are appropriate for Medicare telehealth reimbursement by creating an advisory committee of practicing telehealth providers. Medicare would retain the final decision making authority, but they would have the benefit of the advice of actual telehealth providers.

Please contact your 2 U.S. Senators and urge them to co-sponsor S. 2812.

Telemedicine and Telehealth Federal and Legislative Update

A federal and legislative update for telehealth was published is now available on the TIE's article page. It gives a brief overview of current bills, congressional committees, subcommittees, federal agencies, and state legislation that involve telehealth. It was compiled by Carolyn Bloch, publisher of the Federal Telemedicine News.