The Marshfield Clinic Health System supported the proposed expansion for psychotherapy services and annual wellness visits and also urged the CMS to consider a patient's home “as a valid site of service to reduce unnecessary facility charges and inefficiencies brought about by having a patient present to an eligible facility for telehealth services when some visits do not require this added level of service.”
Mental Health America in its comments said it “commends CMS” for the new codes for mental health visits via telehealth, saying they will “improve access to needed treatment for consumers across the United States and mitigate the potential impact of practitioner shortage.”
The not-for-profit association of mental health providers added, however, that people “who may be physically proximate to mental health clinicians but who do not have access to transportation or the supports that make in-person visits possible would also benefit from telehealth and should not be unnecessarily excluded from its benefits.”
Rules require that telehealth payments can be made only to “originating sites,” such as a provider's office, where the patient is located when the telehealth service is made.
The Telecommunications Industry Association, which represents more than 400 manufacturers, vendors and suppliers of communications technology, urged the CMS to give greater latitude for the use of home monitoring and patient-generated health data.
“The known benefits of remote patient-monitoring services include improved care, reduced hospitalizations, avoidance of complications and improved satisfaction, particularly for the chronically ill,” the association said. “In addition, the use of virtual chronic-care management by the Department of Veterans Affairs resulted in a substantial decrease in hospital and emergency room use.”
“We urge CMS to allow for the full range of available technologies to improve quality, safety, efficiency and reduce health disparities by engaging patients and families while improving care coordination, population and public healthcare,” the TIA said.
The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, while generally supportive of the proposed rule changes, said it would like the CMS to reconsider how much it pays for telehealth visits.
“Both the provider and the consumer communities welcome the opportunity to promote and to access new channels of healthcare delivery,” the Blues association said in its letter.
But its letter also recommends that the CMS “develop unique codes for equivalent services delivered via telehealth, rather than relying on the reporting platform developed for rural access,” and then “rationalize the RVU (relative value unit) methodology to reflect lower practice expense costs incurred by providers delivering these services.”
Follow Joseph Conn on Twitter: @MHJConn
