Guest AuthorPhysician house calls could be making a comeback in Florida through the use of the latest innovative health-care technology, telemedicine.
Florida has a chance to drastically change the landscape of its health-care delivery system during the current legislative session, generate significant cost-savings and lay the foundation for long-term sustainability by enacting telemedicine legislation.
With the state’s population on target to surpass the 20 million mark in 2016, and the number of individuals over 65 increasing to more than 24 percent of the population by 2030, Florida needs to create a path to health-care access for all who call the state home, whether they are in rural areas, inner cities, or assisted living facilities. Telemedicine has the power to connect these hard-to-reach patients with physicians and other health-care providers who can provide their needed care.
According to America’s Health Rankings, Florida has ranked in the bottom quintile in the last few years for key health indicators, coming in 48th for geographic disparities across counties in 2011, and 41st in disparity in health status in 2013.
Telemedicine, sometimes known as telehealth, is an alternative method of delivering health care that is not an in-person consultation and involves the exchange of medical information across locations via electronic communications to improve patient care, treat and educate patients and to provide health services. Telemedicine can address gaps in quality health care while generating significant savings through timely health interventions and treatments that avoid more expensive emergency room or hospital care. If merely 1 percent of Florida’s total hospital charges were avoided through health-care services delivered by telemedicine practice, the state could generate $1 billion annually to reinvest in Florida’s other needs.
Facilitating access to quality care through telemedicine can be done in the Florida Legislature during this session to set Florida on a course for long-term success regardless of any uncertainty surrounding federal health-care reform. Telemedicine has been successfully used across health conditions and medical specialties, from pediatrics, to geriatrics, to chronic disease maintenance, to emergency treatment. Nationally, a majority of hospitals utilize some form of telemedicine.
In Florida, telemedicine primarily exists in uncoordinated pockets of the state, funded by several well-reputed health-care facilities that have invested in telemedicine services on their own dollar, as reimbursement is uncertain or nonexistent. Florida has no requirement that either Medicaid or private payers cover telemedicine services. While Medicare and Medicaid reimburse for telemedicine services equivalent to in-person services, funding is limited and conditional. Most Florida health entities bear the full burdens and benefits of offering telemedicine services.
The time to act on telemedicine is now. Momentum in favor of telemedicine has been steadily building in recent years as business organizations, health organizations and thought leaders convened in a new Florida TeleHealth Workgroup to discuss telemedicine needs, practice, and policy. Telemedicine provides significant economic development opportunities for job creation in the telecommunications and health sectors, may extend career-life for aging health-care practitioners, and provides an unprecedented opportunity to make Florida a worldwide virtual health-care hub.
Policymakers should act this session to remove disincentives or unnecessary barriers to the use of telemedicine statewide and lay a solid policy-based foundation for statewide expansion of telemedicine as a critical and necessary step toward long-term sustainability for the health of the state: its people and its budget. The opportunity costs of not doing so are simply too high.
Tamara Y. Demko, J.D., MPH, is director of the TaxWatch Center for Health and Aging. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
