Louisiana Telehealth Bill Moves Forward
The Louisiana House unanimously passed a telehealth bill to remove the requirement that physicians be located within the state. The House voted 91-0 Wednesday to pass HB-570, two days after the state Senate passed a similar bill, SB-328. The legislature…
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has until June 6 adjournment to agree on which bill to move forward. Teladoc supported both versions of the bill for removing the residency restriction and for being technology neutral (see 1604190011). The Alaska Legislature removed its own in-state restriction for telehealth last week (see 1604180054). State legislation on telehealth has ramped up year after year, said a Center for Connected Health Policy (CCHP) annual report released Thursday. “In the 2016 legislative session, forty-four states have introduced over 150 telehealth-related pieces of legislation,” it said. “Many bills address different aspects of reimbursement in regards to both private payers and Medicaid, with some bills making changes to existing reimbursement laws. Many states have also proposed legislation that would adopt the Federation of State Medical Board’s model language for an Interstate Medical Licensure Compact.” Some states continue to restrict and limit telehealth services, CCHP said. “No two states are alike in how telehealth is defined and regulated.” CCHP said 47 states have some form of reimbursement for telehealth, but Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Utah don't. The most commonly reimbursed form of telehealth is live video, it said. “However, what and how it is reimbursed varies widely. The spectrum ranges from a Medicaid program in a state like Connecticut, which will only reimburse for case management behavioral health services for clients under the age of eighteen, to states like California, which reimburses for live video across a wide variety of medical specialties.” Only nine states reimburse for store-and-forward services, in which clinical information like X-rays are stored and then forwarded to another site, because many states define telehealth as real-time, it said. Only 16 states reimburse for remote patient monitoring, the same number as in 2015, it said. On location, some states continue to restrict reimbursable telehealth to rural or underserved areas, but this is decreasing, CCHP said. Also, 23 states specify what sites can serve as an originating site for telehealth, it said.