Coronavirus Requires Telehealth Update From Congress And States

As we grapple with the steady crawl of the coronavirus outbreak across the country, families, employees, and businesses are encouraged to take precautions to limit exposure. But with crowded clinics, it’s difficult to know what to do if you’re concerned about your health. This outbreak has shone a light on the need to expand telehealth laws.

President Trump signed a funding bill to help health officials and agencies address this emergency that did ease some telehealth barriers for those on Medicare, but significant barriers still exist for the widespread utilization of telehealth as a tool to fight and monitor patients in need of care to prevent additional spreading of the virus.

Most states’ laws—even states that are members of compacts—are very physician centric, and don’t contemplate other providers utilizing telehealth such as nurses, nurse practitioners, or physician assistants—all of whom are part of the backbone of our care systems.

Special interest groups and state boards have built barriers to prevent or slow care across state lines if the provider doesn’t live there, and to require providers to jump through all the costly and timely hoops to obtain a license in each state to care for patients.

This becomes a problem if an outbreak happens in one area or state and health care providers get sick as well, and the need for more providers to help patients becomes even more acute than it is now. Additionally, some state laws restrict the location that patients or providers can conduct telehealth visits, forcing patients into hospitals with other patients that could spread the virus, instead of allowing patients to be at home to consult with a provider over telehealth. State laws are not ready for coronavirus or even more day-to-day health issues like managing diabetes for that matter.

The spread of disease does not stop at the state border, so our laws need to be modernized to allow providers in good standing in their primary place of practice to provide care, when medically necessary, to a patient regardless of where that patient may be.

Think about it this way, if your family member got sick tomorrow, and the nation’s leading expert on treating coronavirus lived in the state next to yours, you could not see them without them first getting a full medical license in your home state. Our laws should not discriminate based on geography.

Some telehealth companies do have providers in many states, but there are not even close to enough providers in place to care for the volume of patients that may come if the virus is not contained.

In 2018, the Trump administration took an important step as part of reform at the Veterans Administration to allow veterans to access a provider from anywhere in the country over telehealth, and and removed barriers that prevented this flexibility.

The president and Congress should follow that model and set in place rules that allow providers to be located anywhere in the country to see patients while allowing patients to receive care in the best location for them to prevent additional spreading, which is not the case today in federal law and in most state laws.

Quick action is needed to update federal and state laws to allow for more flexible telehealth options for care. It should not be a mandate, but rather clearing the runway for providers and insurers allow them to work together to figure out the most innovative and accessible ways to allow patients to receive the care they need if the coronavirus spreads.

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