By Sandra Ray, Staff Writer
Who Pays?
Even though the healthcare industry is
evolving with technology, insurers and Medicare
are slow to pay for telehealth services. Those
organizations that rely on remote monitoring in
the patient’s home to give a better picture of
how a patient may be recovering or performing on
a daily basis are also dependent on government
grants and private pay in order to provide those
services. There is a compelling benefit for
insurers and Medicare to begin providing
services through telehealth systems.
A study by the University of Tennessee
Graduate School of Medicine revealed that for
patients with congestive heart failure, medical
costs are approximately $8 billion per year. By
using remote monitoring services in the home,
those costs are reduced dramatically to $4.2
billion/year – almost half the cost of
traditional medical services. The cost of remote
monitoring was included in the lower costs,
demonstrating that telehealth is a viable
benefit to patients and caregivers in terms of
reduced medical costs.
The American Telemedicine Association
supports Medicare reform to include the costs of
remote monitoring in patient care. In its newly
released “Federal Policy Recommendations for
Home Telehealth and Remote Monitoring,” the
organization notes that “home telehealth
(including remote monitoring) should be used as
a part of a coordinated, comprehensive care
program designed to reduce health care costs
(through decreased hospitalizations and hospital
days of care) and improve clinical outcomes.”
Caregivers can assist patients by helping to
research the types of home monitoring systems
that are available and those that are affordable
to the patient. If insurance is reluctant to
pay, there may be more affordable options
available. In addition, organizations that
provide services to seniors and the disabled are
now actively seeking grant funding to provide
services like these in the home because they
know that healthy individuals are less of a
strain on the social service delivery system in
the community. Since there is no “one size fits
all” system available, individuals need to be
aware of what services are needed and how
telehealth companies can meet those needs.
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