HEALTH CARE WEEK IN REVIEW: FTC Asks CMS To Lift Telehealth Reimbursement Restrictions Permanently, Adapting To Challenges Of COVID-19 With Trends In Health Care Payments, Telehealth Claim Lines Increased More Than 4,000% In The Past Year, CMS Offers Flexibility For Value-Based Care Models Affected By COVID-19
Source: Medical Economics
Here's The Latest in Health Care:
• The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently sent a letter to CMS advocating for broad access to telehealth to become permanent. The FTC believes strongly that telehealth can reduce roadblocks to care for older adults across both rural and urban settings, including urban areas where underserved populations have provider shortages. Many experts consider reducing restrictions on Medicare reimbursement of telehealth services especially important because Medicare influences the reimbursement policies of state Medicaid programs and private payers as well. Read More
• Providers are still struggling to adapt to consistently and successfully collecting from patients according to the Trends in Healthcare Payments Annual Report. The long-term impacts of COVID-19 are predicted to bring an additional spotlight to eradicating manual, paper-based, human-dependent approaches to payments. Providers are being forced to rethink all the options to connect with consumers as the recent growth telehealth has shown. Read More
• Telehealth claim lines increased more than 4,000% nationally from March 2019 to March 2020, growing from 0.17% of medical claim lines to 7.52% over that time. With fewer elective procedures due to widespread restrictions, the telehealth share of total medical claim lines is expected to continue to increase greatly. Telehealth had already been growing in recent years, but even faster growth is on the horizon as a result of COVID-19. Read More
• In an effort to ensure participation in value-based care payment models as providers struggle financially under the pandemic, CMS outlined a series of major changes intended to address problems created by COVID-19. These updates include delaying the start of a new accountable care organization (ACO) model, extending the Next-Gen ACO model, and more. Read More
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