Carrie Nixon on the Future of Telehealth in Healthcare Finance News
“COVID-19 may permanently alter the telehealth landscape, from reimbursement to utilization"
Nixon Law Group’s Managing Partner, Carrie Nixon, was quoted extensively in an article appearing in Healthcare Finance regarding her views on the current and future landscape for healthcare.
“Carrie Nixon of Virginia-based Nixon Law Group has been following the space closely for years:
‘What I have seen over the past number of years is some regulatory and legislative barriers that have made adoption of technology like telehealth and remote patient monitoring difficult, and without incentive, for physician practices who are already feeling overburdened with costs and administrative duties in running their practices,’ said Nixon.
‘I think we would have been in a different position with this crisis if a telemedicine infrastructure had already been in place,” said Nixon. “There wouldn’t be this scrambling.’
On telehealth and Congress:
‘As we know, Congress has had an awfully difficult time agreeing on anything, particularly relating to healthcare over the past decade,’ said Nixon. ‘There were bills introduced over the years, but they were never able to come to the floor and be passed. CMS' hands were tied from a regulatory perspective. They were not able to make changes…’
On distinguish Remote Patient Monitoring from telehealth:
‘The way they were laid out in the schedule had ambiguity around the details," said Nixon. "CMS did this so they were not being overly prescriptive and inadvertently stifling innovation by putting too many constraints around technology, which wouldn't take into account innovations that hadn't occurred by the time they were putting the rules together.’
‘We'll likely need a legislative change for these changes to be permanent,’ said Nixon. ‘There will be more of an impetus now. Once patients have had telehealth, it's likely they won't want to go back.’”
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