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Fort Wayne Journal Gazette State Medicaid to cover telemedicine
Patients – particularly in rural areas – may have more access to medical specialists after Indiana announced Monday that its Medicaid program will begin covering telemedicine. The announcement from the Family and Social Services Administration elicited some interest from Fort Wayne’s competing health care systems but there are no plans to roll out new programs just yet. When the program begins May 1, Indiana will join at least 34 other states where Medicaid already covers telemedicine. That includes the use of interactive videoconferencing for real-time consultation as well as some components of physical examinations, such as skin conditions, retinal exams and heart exams. “Telemedicine will save patients time and the expense of traveling to see a specialist,” Family and Social Services said. The process will involve two sites: a spoke site for patients and a hub site for physicians with interactive videoconferencing equipment virtually connecting the sites. At present, telemedicine by Medicaid’s definition is being employed on a very limited basis. A program called Riley Connections, affiliated with Riley Hospital for Children and Clarian Health in Indianapolis, for example, uses mobile carts equipped with videoconferencing equipment and a digital stethoscope. The setup provides a specialist with diagnostic information and a means to communicate with patients and their families remotely. Reimbursement from Medicaid should help boost the presence of such telemedicine practices in the state, said Pamela Whitten, a professor of communication and faculty scholar at Purdue’s Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering. After meeting with representatives from around the state last fall, the center produced a report this month on the state of telemedicine in Indiana. It pointed to inconsistent reimbursement as one of the impediments to telemedicine in the state. According to Jeanne LaBrecque, director of the Office of Medicaid Policy and Planning, who attended the conference last fall, Medicaid will pay for the spoke and hub site visit fee. In addition, “Medicaid will pay for some of the infrastructure that goes into telemedicine,” she said in a statement. “This cost will be offset by not having to pay transportation costs for either the specialist or the patient.” But it remains to be seen whether that will change the face of health care locally. “We’re always interested in looking at new technology to improve the health care of our patients,” said Gary Penner, a spokesman for Parkview Health. Only time will tell whether that interest will materialize into future projects for the system, which was named by the American Hospital Association as one of the 100 “Most Wired” and 25 “Most Wireless” hospitals and health systems in the U.S. And Patricia Hays, senior vice president of strategic development of Lutheran Health Network, isn’t sold on the idea. “Patients are always going to want to see a physician face-to-face,”
Hays said. For now Hays said northeast Indiana isn’t seeing critical shortages of physicians and most medical specialties are accounted for, unlike in some rural areas around the country. So she doesn’t expect Lutheran to invest in telemedicine anytime soon. “I don’t see a need at this point,” she said.
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