Forty states as well as Washington D.C., have either implemented policies or received awards to increase their state's telemedicine coverage and reimbursement in the past two years, according to the American Telemedicine Association's recent report.
Here are three notes from the ATA's 2019 State of the States Report: Coverage and Reimbursement, according to a news release emailed to Becker's Hospital Review:
1. Most states do not have restrictions around eligible provider types, but 10 states have authorized more than six types of health providers to treat patients through telemedicine.
2. Just 16 states have limited telemedicine technology to only synchronous applications while the remaining states have recognized remote patient monitoring and the store and forward method, which is collecting clinical data and sending it electronically to another facility to evaluate.
3. Thirty-six states and Washington D.C., have parity policies for private payer coverage, and only 21 states and Washington D.C., present coverage parity policies in Medicaid.