Telehealth is no longer the wave of the future of health care; it is the present. Our clients understand that and we assist them by providing legal guidance in an ever-changing statutory and regulatory environment.
Through electronic connectivity, mobile technologies, equipment and/or all of the above, telehealth brings needed health care services to geographic areas and the patients within them. It connects patients with highly-trained specialists that may otherwise be too far away for the patient to visit. Telehealth enables provider training to physicians in underserved areas across the country and even the world. Telehealth is way more than telemedicine; it is a vast myriad of health care services, licensed and unlicensed, that can be and are offered through telehealth modalities.
Our clients are providers, large and small, established and start-up. They are venture capitalists, telehealth service entities and software companies.
We assist our clients in creating telehealth service arrangements, forming telehealth entities (both provider and non-provider), reviewing software and licensing agreements and providing general advice as to the viability of a particular telehealth arrangement within the applicable state statutory and regulatory construct.
Telehealth arrangements raise the same legal issues as traditional in-person health care arrangements. These include professional licensure, Stark and anti-kickback compliance, reimbursement, state corporate practice considerations, and HIPAA privacy and security regulation. Despite the parallels and similarities, many states impose additional restrictions on telehealth in the form of practice restrictions, special licensure or requirements for e-prescribing. Furthermore, it is often the case that telehealth technologies outpace regulatory developments. Simply put, the regulations do not reflect the current status of the industry and in many ways stifle it, particularly when it comes to reimbursement. To date, Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement for telehealth services is limited, though commercial payor parity is becoming more common. We keep clients informed about legal developments in their home states and in the states where they provide services.
Telehealth is a hot and fast-paced industry operating within ever-changing legal parameters. In this type of environment, stakeholders need advisors, like ours, who have their fingers on the pulse of the industry and provide the most up-to-date guidance.