Telehealth Reimbursement & COVID-19

As foreshadowed in the previous episode, we can't go much further into exploring telehealth during COVID-19, and its prospects for being available after COVID-19, without discussing reimbursement. So here we dip our toes in.

If you want to do more than toe-dip, the entire narration can be considered an audio introduction to this guide to telehealth expansion from Bi-State Primary Care Association, which you can read at your leisure. New rules get released pretty much daily, so if you follow this page you'll have plenty of updates to keep you entertained - it's regulatory guidance in serial novel format.

One thing that might help with this episode is to listen to our old episode on the difference between "telemedicine" and "telehealth". 

The good news? You can simplify this to think of telehealth being the broader universe of remote, digital health care, and telemedicine to be the narrower application where you are using a live, interactive patient-provider connection to replace a typical face-to-face office visit.

The bad news? Medicare uses "telehealth" to mean what everyone else calls "telemedicine" and they use "telemedicine" to mean everything that isn't "telehealth."

That fact alone should give you a taste of what it feels like to try to understand the world of telehealth reimbursement. . . enjoy the episode. Next time, we'll get back to some more provider stories.