After the pandemic will you still be able to access telemedicine services? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:05 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Telemedicine took a quantum leap during the pandemic, with millions of visits across the nation. Now that both state and federal emergency access is expired or about to be, what is the situation now? Brian Hasselfeld, director of telemedicine at Johns Hopkins, explains the barriers in making telemedicine more accessible.

Hasselfeld: A couple different barriers, and we’ll put them in two big buckets. Does my insurance cover it, and can I get it where I’m physically located? And they both have some real regulatory challenges ahead of them. Broadly, most commercial insurers cover telemedicine before the pandemic, and we believe most likely are going to continue to do so after, but Medicare and Medicaid insure a lot of people, and for those two insurers, and the people insured by those programs, that will be the decision of the federal government for Medicare, and state government for Medicaid.  :33

Hasselfeld notes that Medicare’s rulesmaking is often the pattern other insurers follow. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.