Telehealth trends focus on state legislative and regulatory developments impacting healthcare providers, telemedicine and digital health companies, pharmacists, and technology companies that provide and facilitate virtual care.
Trends over the past week:
- interstate highway compact
- Professional standards and supervisory requirements
- Redemption requirements
Learn more
Enactment of final laws and regulations
- arizona Enacted SB 1173, establishing the Counseling Agreement.
- mississippi We enacted SB 2157 (mentioned in last week's post), which adopted the Psychology Interjurisdictional Compact.
- kentucky We passed both bills that I mentioned in last week's blog post.
- SB 255 establishes requirements and standards for the provision of social work services via telehealth.
- SB 111: Requires health benefit plans, limited medical services benefit plans, Medicaid, and state health plans to cover speech therapy provided in person or via telehealth.
- west virginia It also enacted regulations regarding the work of registered dietitians. Specifically, the rulemaking established procedures for conducting telemedicine by certified dietitians. This regulation provides relevant definitions of telemedicine, licensing standards, establishment of physician-provider relationships solely via telemedicine, and standards for the practice of telemedicine (for exampleconsent, identity verification, confidentiality standards, etc.).
- arizona Enacts rulemakings governing the Medicaid program and requiring the Arizona Department of Health Services (Department) to register with the department and pay registration fees by health care providers. A health care provider that registers with the Department maintains a legal representative for procedural services within the state and the health care provider's professional liability insurance includes coverage for telehealth services provided to customers in Arizona. You need to make sure that. There are other requirements as well.
Proposal-level legislation and rulemaking activities
highlight:
- wyoming A physician or physician assistant who has established a provider-patient relationship in another state with a patient who resides in Wyoming may provide continued care to the patient through telemedicine, even without a Wyoming physician or physician assistant license. Emergency rulemaking was enacted specifying what can be done. next:
- (i) The provider-patient relationship must be established in person in the state in which the physician or physician assistant is licensed.
- (ii) While the patient is in Wyoming, subsequent care may be provided via telemedicine if it is a logical and expected continuation of care provided in-person in the state in which the physician or physician assistant is licensed. may be provided to patients via If the patient presents with a new medical condition or the standard of care determines that in-person care is necessary, the patient should return to the state where the physician or physician assistant is licensed to treat them or refer them to a health care provider. is needed. Wyoming licensed health care provider.
- (iii) Telehealth may continue for up to six months after the provider-patient relationship is established in another state. Thereafter, an in-person visit must occur in a jurisdiction where the physician or physician assistant is licensed prior to telemedicine. It may be possible to restart for another six months.
- in tennessee, HB 2318 passed through both chambers. If enacted, the bill would, among other things, provide for remote monitoring of physician assistants (PAs) who practice via telemedicine within the state. Specifically, the bill would provide that an entity operating exclusively via telemedicine would have the same authority to provide prescription services in a remote office or clinic that a physician assistant would be authorized to provide; Provides that any necessary personal review of medical records by a cooperating physician may be arranged. Necessary visits to remote locations by the physician and/or cooperating physician via HIPAA-compliant electronic means rather than on-site in the clinic.
- in vermont state, H 453 passed through both chambers. If this bill becomes law, a social worker agreement will be enacted.
- in iowaHF 2512 also passed both chambers and would establish the Social Workers Compact.
Why it's important:
- States continue to increase activity around licensing agreements for various medical professionals. These state efforts demonstrate a desire to reduce the burden of the licensing process and encourage practice in multiple jurisdictions without relinquishing authority over professional licensure. The social work agreement, counseling agreement and psychology cross-jurisdictional agreement all saw progress this week.
- States continue to amend and clarify their standards of professional practice regarding telehealth. With the increase in care delivery through virtual modalities, specialty boards have adopted standards to govern the practice of telemedicine across multiple health care professions to reflect current technology and practices and ensure consistency across the professions. We are revising existing standards to This week, there was a particular focus on practice standards for physician assistants, including a proposed bill that would allow for flexibility in remote supervision in Tennessee.
