Tracking the Telemonitoring Trend

I recently attended the Remote Telemonitoring and Home Telehealth Forum sponsored by the American Telemedicine Association. There was “standing room only.”

I am not sure if our end of the health care industry has yet grasped the importance of telemedicine and how it can dramatically affect the way health care services will be provided and monitored in the future.

Telemedicine is best described as the ability to monitor a patient using the latest tools available electronically. This means that pertinent information can be available to medical practitioners without the patient's being physically present — and without sending a person to obtain the patient's data. The result is two-fold: reduced costs and improved care.

What I learned at the ATA conference was the “how” of telemedicine. The new equipment I saw during these sessions has the capability of providing a patient's vital signs to a doctor almost instantaneously.

The patient is able to have his weight recorded, his blood pressure and pulse rate indicated, oxygen concentration and other vital information transmitted directly to the practitioner. Armed with this material, decisions can be made as to how the patient is responding to care and whether there is a necessity for further follow-up by the technician, nurse or physician.

One of the challenges to telemedicine currently being addressed is reimbursement. Who should be paid? How should this payment be provided? The provider who supplies the monitoring unit, the person who administers the service and the expert who receives, records and responds to this information all should be reimbursed.

Currently, there are schedules in place for some specific services, and in pending legislation for prescriptions there are codes that will assign payments for telemedicine services.

What I hope to see in the near future is Medicare and other payers offering HME dealers and home health agencies sufficient reimbursement for providing telemedicine services. If payers recognize that providing care electronically will cut health care costs, then they will see the necessity for reimbursing for telemonitoring services.