Telehealth

Dallas-based Medical City Healthcare has deployed more than 650 tech devices to expand telehealth visits across its network, conserve personal protective equipment and curb the spread of COVID-19.

The coronavirus response has boosted telehealth use considerably, and many investors are banking on telehealth as the way of the future.

The Federal Communications Commission approved six funding applications totaling more than $3 million to providers, including Mount Sinai Health System, UPMC and Ochsner Clinic Foundation, through its new COVID-19 telehealth program. 

To help expand access to care during the COVID-19 pandemic, several insurance companies have loosened restrictions on telehealth claims for both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 related care.

Humana recently expanded access to more than 150 telehealth and other virtual services such as virtual check-ins, e-visits and telephone evaluations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even before the CDC recommended that healthcare entities consider alternatives to face-to-face appointments and made it easier to bill for telehealth visits, our hospital planned to explore the technology in 2020.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts announced on April 13 that it has processed 180,000 telehealth claims since expanding coverage for virtual care during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As an emergency medicine physician, Hazar Khidir, MD, was used to only seeing patients once. However, with the uncertainties of COVID-19, Dr. Khidir has begun calling her former patients to check how they are doing, she wrote in an op-ed…

The Michigan Health Endowment Fund is gifting $2.95 million to various healthcare providers in the state to boost telehealth services, according to NBC 25 News.

As medical students take their classes online, Nashville, Tenn.-based Vanderbilt University School of Medicine is offering a pandemic course, according to Knox News.