Coronavirus Scare Likely to Boost Telehealth Adoption Among Home-Based Care Providers

On Thursday, the Senate approved a bill that will provide $8.3 billion in emergency funds to help mitigate the effects of COVID-19, otherwise known as the coronavirus. Apart from funding, the bill made major changes to telehealth statutes, possibly allowing home-based care providers to both rely heavier on telehealth tools and be properly reimbursed for those services.

Specifically, Congress is allowing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to waive certain originating-site constraints, such as the ones that restrict telehealth in nonrural settings. Providers will also be allowed to conduct telehealth instruction over telephones with audio and video capabilities.

“Because all of the United States is currently under this public health emergency designation, any Medicare beneficiary would now be eligible for care from a provider via a two-way audio-video mechanism, including a smartphone,” legal experts from Alston & Bird wrote in an advisory note. “This applies anywhere in the U.S. for any Medicare-reimbursable telehealth service — not just for treatment of the coronavirus.”

Since the coronavirus began spreading throughout the United States, many home health industry insiders have pushed for greater use of telehealth technology.

Among them is Raj Kaushal, the founder of Senior Healthways Inc. and a former president at LHC Group Inc. (Nasdaq: LHCG).

“We have to look at delivery of care in the case of an outbreak — and how we can shift it,” Kaushal told Home Health Care News. “Can we utilize a triage system? Can we use telehealth? If we’re an agency that doesn’t have telehealth, can we use telephone and text monitoring systems? Video conferencing? We need to find ways to make sure exposure to the patient and the staff is minimal, if it comes to that.”

Despite opening some new doors, there are still certain limitations to the newly relaxed telehealth requirements. Also, for providers that do use smartphones to connect with patients, existing HIPAA standards will still apply.

So far, the coronavirus has impacted more than 108,000 people around the world. As of Monday afternoon, the number of confirmed cases in the United States was approaching 600.