Resources & Reports

In September, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed formal charges against 138 defendants in multiple health care fraud cases. The largest fraud, resulting in $1.1 billion in allegedly false and fraudulent claims, has been categorized by many news outlets, and even in the DOJ press release as ‘telemedicine fraud’.  The actual fraud involved telemedicine company executives paying doctors and nurse practitioners to order unnecessary durable medical equipment (DME) and other testing without a patient interaction, or just based on a brief telephonic conversation.

Last week the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG) released two new telehealth reports, both related to the use of telehealth to deliver behavioral health services to Medicaid beneficiaries. HHS-OIG breaks up their study into two reports:

• States Reported Multiple Challenges with Using Telehealth to Provide Behavioral Health Services to Medicaid Enrollees (Challenges Report) which focuses on state care delivery issues, and
• Opportunities Exist to Strengthen Evaluation and Oversight of Telehealth for Behavioral Health in Medicaid (Evaluation Report), which looks closer at state data collection and evaluation efforts.

While the pandemic has increased support and attention around the role of telehealth in strengthening our health care system, the pandemic has also highlighted many remaining barriers and infrastructure issues that inherently inhibit telehealth’s continued growth and utilization. Those existing issues have subsequently increased the role of funding in telehealth policy. While federal lawmakers have yet to make substantial telehealth policy changes, there have been many recent investments that look to accelerate telehealth adoption and expand its reach to all communities.

CCHP’s September Newsletter is Here! This month’s topics include: August Policy Developments in CCHP’s Telehealth Policy Finder and Policy Trends Maps; Telehealth Improving Health Outcomes for Homeless Populations; Telehealth Certification Requirement on the Rise; CDC Research and Development Survey (RANDS) Shows Trends in Household Use of Telemedicine; Telehealth Adoption Improving Outlook for Independent Practices; Facebook Places Extra Restrictions on Telemedicine Advertising; Comparative Billing Report: Impact of the Public Health Emergency on Telehealth.

As emergency telehealth expansions have begun to expire one of the most pressing policy areas has become licensing and the state flexibilities that temporarily allow out-of-state providers to treat patients via telehealth during the pandemic regardless of location. It is now one of the number one issues CCHP receives policy questions about.