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PATIENT EMPOWERMENT NETWORK
Many doctors are saying Gosh, there's so many things I can do this way that I hadn't thought about, and I'm going to continue to practice this way. So telehealth services have grown a like wildfire. Before the pandemic, mental health was the biggest user and for sure now mental health providers are still the biggest users of telehealth. In mental health care, providers are talking to the patient, so it's very easy to make that transition. And then we mentioned chronic illness before, but it turns out that the screening questions used to decide if someone needs a COVID test can easily be asked via telehealth. if someone is sick at home with only mild symptoms, that individual can be monitored quite well using this kind of virtual care tool set because it's all about asking questions.
So those are the main things that we're seeing -- the use of telehealth for follow-up visits for all kinds of conditions and health concerns, mental health, as well as respiratory symptom questions to determine if individuals need additional testing for coronavirus. wondering if you can speak to whether or not health insurance cov Honora Miller: I’m wondering if you can speak to whether or not health insurance coverage has kept up with the pace of change in this arena?
Dr. Kvedar:
So great question and any time you ask about insurance coverage, it is always a long answer with a lot of caveats. I'll start with Medicare, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the biggest payer in the country for the elderly and disabled, and they said very early on they would pay for telehealth at the same level they would pay us for seeing you in the office, so that was a big boom.
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