News & Technology
Medicare Finalizes A New Rule for Telemedicine Services to Keep Beneficiaries in Rural and Remote Areas Dialed in Through Telemedicine
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that it has finalized a rule for telemedicine ser‐ vices to ensure that patients in rural or remote areas will continue to receive the most cutting‐edge medical care from many of their local hospitals. The final rule changes the process that hospitals and critical access hospi‐ tals (CAH) can use for credentialing and granting privileges to physicians and practitioners who deliver care through telemedicine. Specifically, the rule sim‐ plifies how hospitals and CAHs partner with hospitals and non‐hospital telemedicine entities (such as teleradi‐ ology facilities) to deliver care to their patients. The streamlined process will be particularly beneficial to patients of small hospitals and CAHs in rural or remote areas that may lack staff or resources to deliver specialized clinical expertise to their patient populations. “Today’s final rule is the result of close collaboration with hospital and
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telemedicine care experts,” said CMS Administrator Donald M. Berwick, MD. “We at CMS want to be sure that as we develop rules to protect the safety and quality of care at America ’s hospitals and CAHs, we also devise policies that reflect the most innovative practices in delivering care to all patients, especial‐ ly patients in rural or remote parts of the country through telemedicine prac‐ tices.”
Before the final rule, CMS regula‐ tions required hospitals and CAHs to grant practice privileges to remote‐site doctors and other practitioners already credentialed in distant‐site facilities, after their own individualized consider‐ ation of the practitioner’s qualifica‐ tions, on a practitioner‐by‐practitioner basis. This meant that these practition‐ ers could not provide care via telemed‐ icine unless they were granted practice privileges both by their home hospital as well as by the remote hospital or CAH to which the telemedicine services
were being delivered.
Privileging decisions are currently made based upon the recommenda‐ tions of a hospital’s staff after the staff has thoroughly examined and verified the credentials of the practitioners and also used specific criteria to determine whether privileges should be granted. As part of credentialing, hospitals research the qualifications of licensed healthcare professionals and assure that these qualifications are appropri‐ ate and legitimate. Privileging consid‐ ers a practitioner’s credentials, includ‐ ing a license or ability to legally practice in a state, the practitioner’s training and experience, any special certifica‐ tions the individual may hold from a medical specialty board, as well as the individual’s clinical skills and abilities. The final rule aims to reduce the bur‐ den of the traditional credentialing and privileging process for Medicare‐partic‐ ipating hospitals and CAHs, both those that provide telemedicine services and
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