Indiana?s Family and Social Services Administration (?FSSA?) has published a proposed rule in the Indiana Register that would allow for telemedicine to be reimbursed by Medicaid. A copy of the rule is attached to this post. In the comments, FSSA recognizes that reimbursing for telemedicine services would save the state money and make specialty medical care available to individuals in rural settings.
Unfortunately, the proposed rule allows for reimbursement of telemedicine services in a very narrow set of circumstances.The definition of telemedicine does not create any new ?services? that are reimbursable, but simply allows for the reimbursement of services when provided via video teleconference. Of course, this may rule out a number of telemedicine technologies that can improve the quality of home care for patients, but that do not involve video teleconferencing.
For home care, this would not necessarily be fatal, because most home computers can now handle video teleconferencing. However, the rule includes a list of services that are not reimbursable as telemedicine services. This list includes home health services and waiver services.
Although most home health and waiver services are ?hands on? and would not lend themselves to remote delivery, there is a growing trend to use telehealth in home health care. This is a trend encouraged by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. FSSA has overlooked the ways that telemedicine can improve home care and save the state money as well.For those of you who were hoping Indiana was going to start reimbursing for telemedicine, it appears Indiana is finally recognizing the growing trend. However, FSSA needs to be made aware of the uses of telemedicine in home care, so that they might consider a more detailed rule that would allow for telemedicine?s use in home care.
The public hearing for this rule is set for June 22, 2006, at the Indiana Government Center-South, 402 West Washington Street, Conference Center Room 2, Indianapolis, Indiana. That is the home care provider community?s chance to enlighten FSSA as to the uses of telemedicine in home care and try to convince FSSA to specifically address the use of telemedicine in home care.
Attachments:
08P405060029.PDF
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