Wisconsin’s $5M for child psychiatry, community telehealth; FQHC patients prefer audio-only telehealth–Rand

April 5, 2022 | by

The state of Wisconsin is granting $5 million to telehealth vendors, equally split between child telemental health and community telehealth delivery. Governor Tony Evers announced the grant series which was funded by the American Rescue Plan, the third COVID stimulus round of 2021 as part of the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund to bolster rural telehealth plus mental health. With COVID fading, the funds are being redeployed by states for related health initiatives.

Applications are due 6 May for:

  • Up to five one-year grants of approximately $500,000 will be provided to Wisconsin hospitals and health systems to expand and improve child psychiatry telehealth services
  • Between 25 and 50 providers to partner with community organizations to establish neighborhood telehealth access points at food pantries, homeless shelters, libraries, long-term care facilities, community centers, and schools. These are targeted to reach people with limited access to technology and reliable internet service. These are also one-year grants of up to $100,000 each.

While big telehealth funding for mental health grabs the headlines, at the local level, it is these state initiatives that often keep both providers and smaller telehealth companies going. State of Wisconsin release, mHealth Intelligence

RAND Corporation’s study of telehealth in Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) found that audio-only telehealth was used more frequently during the pandemic, and continued to be used by patients for behavioral health even when primary care shifted back to in-person visits. The study group was the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF)’s 45-center Connected Care Accelerator (CCA) program started in July 2020. These centers serve rural, low-income, and underserved populations, common in places like Wisconsin (this Editor worked with a successful FQHC ACO there) and in California.

Audio and video telehealth was problematic for both the patient population and the clinics. Those with limited English proficiency participated in a significantly lower percentage of video visits. Behavioral health centers also had difficulties. Centers that coordinated efforts to replace audio-only with video visits had specific promising practices.

According to the RAND study, “key facilitators of telehealth implementation were leadership support, patient willingness to use the technology, platforms that were easy to use and access, a sense of urgency within clinics, changes in reimbursement policy, and training opportunities for staff.” Another recommendation was to retain centers to serve as distant telehealth sites (and to be reimbursed). Also mHealth Intelligence

Telemedicine may drive up medical utilization, increase cost for respiratory illness: RAND Health

March 8, 2017 | by | 2 Comments
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/business-163464_960_720.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Is convenience the culprit? Researchers from RAND Corporation’s Health program conducted a three-year study of telemedicine (here called telehealth) usage by employees of CalPERS for respiratory illness and came to a surprising conclusion. From the study abstract: “12 percent of direct-to-consumer telehealth visits replaced visits to other providers, and 88 percent represented new utilization. Net annual spending on acute respiratory illness increased $45 per telehealth user.”

The study examined 2011-2013 claims information for over 300,000 people insured through the California California Public Employees’ Retirement System, which despite the name provides health benefits to active state employees as well as retirees. It targeted common acute respiratory infections (sinus infections, bronchitis and related) to determine patterns of provider utilization and the change after the introduction of telehealth. Of that group, 981 used the Teladoc system for video consults, adopted by CalPERS in 2012.

The objective of the study was to determine whether the telehealth visits were new care or substituted for other types of care such as doctor, clinic, or ED visits. Even though the telehealth services were far cheaper–about 50 percent lower than a physician office visit and less than 5 percent the cost of a visit to the ED–they did not make up for the calculated 88 percent rise in utilization.

Similar results were reported by RAND in last year’s research on retail clinics, which estimated that 58 percent of visits for low-severity illnesses were new and not shifted from EDs or doctor’s offices. What is in common? Convenience. Convenience opens up greater use. If you have a store down the street, you may pop in daily versus once-weekly.

Updated: Some further insights from Mobihealthnews were that the study stated that telehealth visits may be more likely to result in additional costs, such as follow-up appointments, testing or prescriptions. In other words, the telehealth visit starts off less expensive, but the standard of care in follow-up adds to that initial cost.

The RAND recommendation is thus not a surprise: make more telemedicine visits a shift from office or ED to restrict telemedicine growth. Raise the cost of co-pays for the service to reduce demand. On the ‘high side’, encourage ED ‘frequent flyers’ to use telehealth services instead. Pass the painkillers. Health Affairs (abstract only; paid access required for full study), RAND Health press release.

Analysis: instead of self-doctoring, and suffering at home and in the workplace, the small group of CalPERS policyholders in the study actually used their new benefit to check their health–as intended! The additional cost is not staggering; (more…)

Good news on telemedicine from the US…and one small potentially dark cloud

May 31, 2015 | by

According to FierceHealthIT, last week three more states – Indiana, Minnesota and Nevada – enacted telemedicine parity laws, bringing the total to 27 plus the District of Columbia, to make it that much easier to provide – and to request provision – of a telemedicine service.

  • Indiana’s requires coverage of the services under private insurance through video, audio or other media. The law prohibits a provider from having to obtain written consent for use of telemedicine.
  • Minnesota’s law says health plans must cover and reimburse for telemedicine the same way and at the same cost as in-person service. Medicaid coverage, according to the law, is limited to three telehealth services per week per beneficiary.
  • Nevada’s requires coverage and reimbursement for telehealth under private insurance and Medicaid, as well as workers compensation (the first state to include this) to the same extent and at the same price as provided in person.

Meanwhile MorningStar reports that a Federal Court ruled in favor of Teladoc, blocking as illegally limiting competition  (more…)