Nixon Law Group’s Managing Partner, Carrie Nixon, was quoted in an article appearing in the Internet of Things World Today discussing telehealth.

The article reviews the the current state of telehealth in the United States, including changes that have occurred since the COVID-19 pandemic. It dives deeper into how providers and companies are (or are not) utilizing telehealth technology now and speculates about the future of telehealth in the United States, outlining the changes needed to expand use of remote patient monitoring and general telehealth.

From the article…

Another hurdle in the U.S. has been the lack of reimbursement for telehealth and remote patient monitoring, said Carrie Nixon, managing partner of the Nixon Law Group. Before the COVID-19 outbreak, federal law required patients to be in rural or underserved areas to be eligible for telehealth. “Once we’re out of the public health emergency, we could go right back to where we were with basically no reimbursement for telehealth,” Nixon said. 

The possibility that reimbursement for telehealth could fall in the future has had a chilling effect for some health care providers. “Some smaller and less progressive practices in the U.S. are still not willing to fully implement a telehealth program when they’re just not sure whether reimbursement will be sustained in the long term,” Nixon said. 

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The medical device industry is moving in this direction, gradually shifting its focus from developing individual devices to services. But the degree that private industry can offer such services has also been held back by regulation intended to limit kickbacks. The restrictions on illicit medical payments have also proven to be a barrier for data analytics used in care coordination. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) had proposed changes to fraud and abuse laws in 2019 that “would very much facilitate new types of collaboration among members of the healthcare ecosystem,” Nixon said. “If CMS finalizes some of those changes to the fraud and abuse infrastructure, it will help stimulate more collaboration to support telehealth and remote patient monitoring.”