NPR’s Talk of the Nation had a lengthy segment on the growing use of telemedicine, especially in home care. In addition discussing the benefits to patients with limited mobility or access to specific services they need and Medicare’s current refusal to reimburse for remote doctor consultations, the segment included a letter from the Alliance’s own James Fuccione, starting at 19’09”:
[HOST NEAL] CONAN: Here’s an email question that has some aspects of that that I wanted to ask you about, this from James [Fuccione] in Massachusetts: The Home Care Alliance of Massachusetts is advocating for Mass Health, [the] state Medicaid program, reimbursement of telehealth used by home health agencies.
Many agencies part of our association use telehealth already because it improves their quality and efficiency. They use wireless weight scales, blood oximeter, blood pressure cuffs, et cetera, and depending on their condition. So in other words you can collect data over these same circuits.
[DR. KAREN] EDISON: Right.
CONAN: Do you use that as well?
EDISON: Yes, so we do a lot of telehome care and remote monitoring here in Missouri. One of our large home health agencies in the southwest part of the state is probably the leader in that area. One of the challenges, of course, is the inter-operability of the health information systems. So as health information technology matures, and the companies become more inter-operable, they can talk to each other and transmit information easily.
You know, as that gets – as that whole industry matures, this is going to get easier and easier so that instead of the home health agency monitoring those patients, actually the patients – patient-centered health care home or medical home, their actual health providers would be monitoring those patients on a daily basis.
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