The nation's highest health officials are trumpeting the success of telemedicine addiction treatment during the coronavirus pandemic. In a new interview with KATU News, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the exception made at the federal level has "certainly expanded availability, especially in rural areas for people to be able to get into and remain in medication-assisted treatment, which is the gold standard of treatment for individuals."
Hazel Health was founded five years ago to provide telemedicine services to children in public schools. Launched by a former Apple software engineer and serial entrepreneur, Nick Woods, and named after one of Woods’ children, Hazel Health has grown to work with school districts responsible for 1.5 million children, and has raised $33.5 million to expand its footprint even further across the United States.
A nationwide dropoff in telemedicine visits is forcing providers who raced to ramp up virtual care in the face of the pandemic to quickly recalibrate their offerings as more patients turn back to in-person appointments.
Telehealth is a bit of American ingenuity that seems to have paid off in the coronavirus pandemic. Medicare temporarily waived restrictions predating the smartphone era and now there’s a push to make telemedicine widely available in the future.
Telemedicine is not a new concept. In fact, Medicare has been offering telehealth services to enrollees for years, largely in an effort to cater to a population of older Americans in which mobility issues are prevalent.
Legal mandates for Idaho insurers to cover telehealth services at the same rate as in-person visits likely aren’t the best route for ensuring that telehealth payment parity remains, a state group of health care experts learned this week.