Resources & Reports

Last month, the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF) released a new report, Remote Patient Monitoring in the Safety Net: What Payers and Providers Need to Know, which looks at remote patient monitoring (RPM) policy considerations and how RPM can improve chronic condition care and prevention. The CHCF report focuses on RPM’s use specific to safety-net providers given system constraints particularly limiting chronic illness management to those patient populations. They note that in California, avoidable hospitalizations are highest for Medicaid beneficiaries and that almost 700 hospitalizations per 100,000 people could be prevented through better access to care and more effective chronic care management.

CCHP’s August Newsletter is Here! This month includes: California Telehealth Policy Updates: New Broadband, Emergency Flexibility Extension, and Health Information Exchange Laws; July Policy Developments in CCHP’s Telehealth Policy Finder and Policy Trends Maps; Large Health Care Coalition Urges Congress to Act on Telehealth; Health Information Access and Privacy Post-Pandemic; Telemedicine Platform Issues for Providers and Patient Preferences; More Data on Telehealth Benefits Related to Emergency Care; NCSL Telehealth Resource for State Legislators; Proposed 2022 PFS and Telemental Health Policies; CONNECT for Health Act of 2021 Fact Sheet and Video

From April 30 – May 21, 2021, the Center for Connected Health Policy (CCHP) held its second Telehealth & Medicaid webinar series with nearly 1,000 attendees across the four webinars. With nine Medicaid programs participating, the purpose of the Spring Series was to examine specific areas of telehealth policy and their impacts on particular patient populations. The Telehealth & Medicaid webinar series will return this Fall and will take place in September/October focusing on topics such as audio-only, policies that have been made permanent, and the Medicaid program’s reasoning for those decisions. Please stay tuned for updates on confirmed speakers for the Fall series.

Temporary telehealth policies during the pandemic, particularly those related to audio-only, highlighted the capacity of community health centers (CHCs) to increase patient access to care in underserved communities. The National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC) recently released a report on their survey of CHCs to assess their telehealth experiences over the course of the public health emergency and determine what the effects would be upon termination of temporary policies, and how that would impact their providers and patients.

On July 13, 2021, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released their proposed CY 2022 Physician Fee Schedule (PFS). The PFS is historically where CMS will make administrative changes to telehealth policy in the Medicare program. As the pandemic begins to stabilize and restrictions begin to lift, there has been great concern as to what will happen with the temporary telehealth changes on the federal level. The CY 2022 proposed PFS is one step towards addressing those questions.