Healthcare Policy Changes During COVID-19: Are They Here to Stay?

While it feels like we’ve been quarantined for much longer, it has only been two months since the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. In these two months, healthcare regulators have made many “temporary” changes that have been asked and advocated for for several years.

Specifically, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and other government agencies have taken steps to expand telehealth solutions--from video chats to Remote Patient Monitoring--to continue to support patients and limit the spread of disease in healthcare settings.

Until this pandemic, adoption of virtual solutions was frustratingly slow. Now, telehealth solutions are seeing a huge spike in demand, with one survey reporting nearly half of all physicians are using telehealth now. The increase in adoption has been helped along by several policy initiatives, summarized below.

Key Temporary Changes

Across state and federal agencies, several regulatory changes have been made in response to COVID-19 that directly affect adoption of telehealth during the public health emergency.

Some of these include:

• The department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is now allowing physicians to practice across state lines, paving the way for telehealth and mHealth

• The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced it will provide $200 million in grants to healthcare providers so they can provide connected care services to patients at home.

• CMS issued an Interim Final Rule that grants broad flexibilities for payment and furnishing of telehealth services, with big wins for Remote Patient Monitoring, including:

1. Waiving patient copays for RPM services
2. Enabling healthcare providers to offer RPM to new patients, not just established patients.
3. Allowing virtual patient consent--rather than face-to-face--for these services.

CMS continues to issue waivers and flexibilities covering everything from FQHCs and RHCs to MSSPs and ESRD facilities. Name an acronym and there’s a COVID-19 policy for it. The latest can all be found here.

Questions Still Remain

While many barriers to connected care adoption have been--at least temporarily--lifted, several questions still remain.

Payment Parity: Will it become policy in all states that government and private payers have to reimburse for telemedicine at the same rates as in-person care?

Payment for Devices: Connected care doesn’t happen without bluetooth or cellular connected medical devices. The FCC could pay for these devices under the COVID-19 Telehealth Program - which would give Remote Patient Monitoring a much-needed boost. Patients and providers need affordable access to this technology in order to facilitate a continuous, virtual model of care with a focus on better patient outcomes. What will be the model post-COVID-19?

Are the changes here to stay? Advocates for telemedicine are confident that now that consumers and providers have a taste of virtual care, they won’t want to go back. If a consumer can order lunch on an app on their phone and have it delivered to their office, why do we make them leave work, trek across town, and pay for parking to see their doctor? Physicians know the impact that connected care can have on patient outcomes, and are finally getting a chance to back it up with data.

For the duration of this pandemic, advocates need to mount pressure on regulators by collecting quality data and sharing as many improved patient experience stories as possible.

Thinking About Starting a Remote Patient Monitoring Program?

Keeping high-risk patients out of the doctor’s office during this pandemic while ensuring they still receive the ongoing support and care they need from their physician can save lives. But it’s important to think beyond this crisis. At Rimidi, we’ve built a next-generation Remote Patient Monitoring Platform that is designed to grow with you. Not only do we collect patient-generated data, but we connect it to clinical data in the EMR and present guideline-based Clinical Decision Support Cards to help you close gaps in care.

We’ve developed a short playbook to provide guidance on Remote Patient Monitoring during COVID-19.

Download the playbook to learn:

• Common use-cases for RPM
• Temporary policy changes to enable wider adoption of RPM
• Average RPM reimbursement rates
• Best practices for choosing an RPM solution