Category Archives: Telemedicine

Trend of Rising Cost of Prescription Drugs Expected to Continue in 2017

The ever rising prices of prescription drugs are among the main factors that push up health-care costs in America. Although prices are increased across the board, specialty drugs get more attention because of their high cost. In 2016 specialty drug prices rose by 18.9 percent, and another increase of 18.7 percent is expected in 2017.

Specialty drugs account for less than 1 percent of all prescriptions but contribute about 35 percent of the price trends of prescription drugs. The general cost of drugs prescribed to people aged 65 and below is expected to rise. In 2016, 11.3 percent price increase was reported while another 11.6 percent is predicted in 2017.

The rise in the cost of prescription drugs is very high and will have an effect on a majority of Americans. A report by Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention indicates that more than half of Americans take at least one prescription a month while one out of five Americans uses at least three prescriptions. It seems Americans are not discouraged by the high prices of the drugs.

In 2015, 4.4 billion drug prescriptions were issued to Americans. Out of the many drugs given out as a prescription, ten brands accounted for 20 percent. The report further indicated that Americans spent $44 per brand of prescription, a rise of 22 percent from the year before. Demand for the drugs does not seem to drop, and the manufacturers may be motivated to increase the prices.

The annual cost of prescription drugs for an individual per brand can exceed $500. This means the cost of prescription can be very high in families with many members depending on prescriptions.

Many Americans commonly use prescription drugs. The high demand may be the reason for the constant rise in prices. Although the price increases on all prescriptions, the attention is on the specialty drugs whose cost rises by a bigger margin than others. Current reports indicate that the trend of rising prices is likely to continue into the future.

Telemedicine has brought a lot of relief in the health sector by making available easy access, timely access and less expensive medical care. Technically speaking, Telemedicine can connect a patient in Idaho to experts in New York. However, it is impractical because of licensing laws that make such interaction impossible.

The Republican health policy reforms suggested by House Speaker Paul Ryan include the power of choice for health care consumers. They will achieve this by the use of health savings account. One of the major delimits of the plan is its lack of measures to address the government bureaucracy that inhibits the consumers’ choice of care. Fortunately, Congress has the power to do away with any such bureaucracies.

The current state laws are more inclined to meeting the interests of providers and not to make a much needed better environment. As they stand, the laws demand telemedicine providers to pay multiple licensing fees in all the states where they want to practice and keep up with the ever-changing rules of all the states. Patients, therefore, have no choice but to settle for the available in-state services.

Federal initiatives to deal with the problem are yet to bear fruits. The Licensure Portability Grant Program funding only served the interests of the board members of the Federation of State Medical Boards who do not want change. It is no wonder that the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact does not enforce license portability. Despite having 17 member states, the compact is yet to make things better for telemedicine providers internationally. Instead, the compact has inhibited actions that would make telemedicine achieve international development.

The Commerce Clause of the Constitution can pass a law to enable physicians to use a single license from their home state to practice in any of the 50 states. The physician will also be guided by the rules and regulations of the state awarding him the license.

It is possible to create a national healthcare market without having first to amass a lot of financial resources. We can stop denying Americans health care of high quality and affordable cost. Telemedicine revolution is the way to achieve all that.

Teladoc’s challenge of the Texas Medical Board’s telemedicine restrictions have been backed by the U.S. Justice Department as well as the Federal Trade Commission. It has been said that the rules are anticompetitive and that they weren’t evaluated in the appropriate manner.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit was instructed by the Justice Department along with the FTC to pay no attention to the appeal by the medical board of Teladoc’s case. The case of Teladoc was set to prevent the board from executing a rule that would hold back the practices of telemedicine in the state of Texas. They’ve felt that the court didn’t really have the right to examine the decision and the rule that was given should be thrown out.

There was a rule that was passed by the Texas Medical Board in 2015… this rule put in place the requirement that physicians needed to meet with a patient face to face prior to treating them via telemedicine. If this didn’t occur, the patient needed to have another provider present physically for a telemedicine visit. There was an amicus brief that was presented by federal regulators on Friday… in this brief it said the rule wasn’t properly reviewed and they felt that the board could be prejudiced.

The fact that there is federal support of Teladoc presents a negative signal towards the Texas Medical Board. There was a preliminary injunction that was granted by a federal judge… this injunction stopped the progress of the telemedicine rules while the case of Teladoc proceeds forward. This shows that the judge believes company that is based in Lewisville, Texas will more than likely succeed in its pursuit to dismiss the state rule permanently.

The state board was initially sued by Teladoc in April 2015. They felt the board was in need of state supervision if they wanted to pass the contentious rules. U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman refused to dismiss the suit in December. He also discarded the claims of the board that it was let off the hook from the supervision requirement from the state.

Teladoc along with the regulators feel that the 5th Circuit doesn’t need to make a ruling regarding this issue, especially since the case is still going on.

If a new study from the independent Kaiser Family Foundation is anything to go by, people will need to brace themselves for massive insurance premium increases under the Affordable Care Act. A quick examination of insurer plans indicates that steep premium increases have been requested for in 2017 in 14 major cities in the U.S. The request for premium increases have been slated to be nearly double of what was asked for this year. The average premium increase requests are slated to be around 10 percent.

It’s likely that the regulators and insurers will only decide final premium rates towards the end of the year for 2017, but the study corroborates the signs that consumers and the government are likely to pay higher insurance prices in several cities across the country. It appears that insurance companies are at a crossroads in terms of charges, so they are trying to cover their costs with these new price requests.

The projections made by the foundation are based on preliminary insurance rates filed with local state regulators. These rates remain subject to review by local and federal regulators before being passed to the people.

While it’s early days, Kaiser’s insurance premium projections will be closely monitored because data is currently only available for some states. The big states like Texas and Florida have been left out of the study for the moment because data hasn’t been made available yet.

The report indicates that consumers may want to compare between different providers to mitigate these insurance premium hikes. But they must be prepared to switch insurers and even their doctors to avoid burdening their wallets.

The Kaiser Family Foundation studied the most popular low-cost silver plans to calculate insurance premium rise requests. A clearer picture will arise towards the closing months of the year when the presidential election heats up. Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton wants to build on the plan, while Republican nominee Donald Trump wants to get rid of it. Since inception, Obamacare has reduced the rate of uninsured people to a low 9 percent.

On May 17, 2016, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed bill S.B. 1363 into law. This bill requires that all private health plans have to pay for telemedicine services in the entire state, rather than just the services in rural areas of Arizona.

The current telehealth coverage law requires that all commercial health insurers provide services to individuals in rural areas. This current law went into place back in January 2015. Because of this current law, all of the residents who live in non-rural areas wouldn’t be able to enjoy telemedicine services with their current insurance plan. Because of the new law going into effect, everyone will be able to enjoy getting telemedicine services, regardless of where they might live.

Thanks to this new bill, the coverage opportunities for Arizona residents has expanded exponentially. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t ample opportunity to continue improving the way things are. This new bill only covers a portion of the telemedicine services, instead of covering all of the current services available via telemedicine to the extent that service is provided in-person. The law gives health plans the chance to limit the amount of coverage available to health care providers that are members of the provider’s network. This new statute will go into effect as of January 1, 2018.

The telehealth providers located in the other states can turn to Arizona for guidance when they advocate and draft their current telehealth coverage laws. Any contract that was delivered, renewed or issued after the January 1, 2015 date has to deliver coverage for services rendered through telemedicine if the service would have been covered through an in-person consultation between the provider and the subscriber.

Current services covered include trauma, cardiology, burn, mental health disorders, infectious diseases, pulmonology, dermatology and neurologic diseases. With 29 states and the District of Columbia having current laws about telehealth insurance, it will only be a matter of time before the rest of the states come on board and offer the same type of services as Arizona and countless others.

Global Telemedicine Market

Telemedicine means using telecommunications technology to deliver medical services or information to patients among other users far from the provider. The telemedicine market is divided into; telehome and telehospital/clinic markets. Telemedicine is experiencing a significant boost in the vast healthcare industry as a result of a dire need for improved clinical outcomes and better quality treatment. Increased awareness of patients’ readings has led to better clinical outcomes as monitored under telemedicine.

The primary trend is to move towards an integrated telemedicine to attain the highest reliability. Many organizations are working to capture all clinical signals. Data transfer speed has by far improved with the aid of IP-based acceleration and transmission control protocol (TCP). More organizations are adopting Web-based interfaces which provide global reach and high levels of interoperability.

The global telemedicine market is expected to reach $23.8 billion in 2016 and $55.1 billion in 2021 which reflects a compound annual growth rate of 18.3% spanning five years. Telehospital/clinic grossed an estimated $11.1 billion in 2015 as a segment while the telehome market division totaled almost $9 billion that same year. The telehome segment is expected to grow at a projected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24% thus increasing its total market share by 15% from 45% in 2015 to 60% in 2021.

During the forecast period, the telehome technology market whose value was estimated to be over $5.3 billion in 2015 should dominate over the telemedicine technology. Telehome technology is expected to grow significantly by over 5% in the telemedicine technology market from 63.5% in 2015 to 68.7% by 2021.Telehospital/clinic technology is projected to reach $7.5 billion by 2021 which is 31.3% of the market representing CAGR of 17.3%.

While telemedicine is recommended as a pivotal technology to back up e-healthcare and significantly reduce costs, it’s absurd to learn that health insurance is increasing in many different markets. For instance, a business owner recently dumbfounded Hillary Clinton when she told her that the cost of health insurance had doubled as the premiums for her family increased by $500 monthly. This would mean trouble for her employees too and other business owners. Clinton alluded that insurance companies should explain their rising costs and that income cut-offs should be more lenient.

Recently, a business owner told Hilary Clinton that the cost of health insurance doubled. Needless to say, Clinton was quite dumbfounded by how the premium could have gone up so much. The campaign event in Virginia brought in a number of business owners and individuals alike. Clinton only said that she didn’t understand how her insurance could have doubled when there weren’t any terrible healthcare events that took place.

According to the voter, her insurance plan has a very strict income cut-off that is preventing her from being able to get any of the subsidies available to many other business owners. The same voter said that her own health insurance premiums for the family went up by $500 every month. They went from spending around $400 every month to over $900 per month now. With them struggling just to keep their own insurance in place, it makes it hard to be able to cover the added cost of the insurance for their employees.

Being able to give your employees the benefits they need isn’t at the forefront of your mind. However, you want to be able to keep your employees happy as well. It makes it difficult when the costs are so high to be able to provide benefits to satisfy your employees needs without straining your pocketbook. While Clinton did offer a number of solutions to the problem, she never really got to the heart of the problem to take care of it.

The cost of health insurance is going up in a number of different markets. While it might not be every market, it is a lot of them. Clinton believes that the Affordable Care Act is a major step in the right direction for the majority of Americans. However, they also have to look at the deductibles, premiums, copays and total out-of-pocket costs. Clinton believes that the income cut-offs should be more lenient and the insurance companies should have to explain their rising costs.

People are getting more comfortable with technology as it gets absorbed in different industries. The medical industry is not different as health-care providers are slowly embracing telemedicine. Telemedicine is where the medical information of a patient is accessed using electronic media to diagnose and treat the patient. Telemedicine includes a wide range of applications including video conferencing, emails, and others.

Mayo Clinic is integrating the use of telemedicine services to benefit its patients. The Rochester clinic is leading in telehealth even as insurers continue resisting and some even refuse to give reimbursements. They have chosen to absorb the costs for the benefit of the patients. They have integrated video conferencing and are looking at other telecommunication technology that can be used to improve their services.

Telemedicine is a means where patients can access medical attention from different locations. One of the benefits of telemedicine according to Dr. Ommen is that patients will access physicians even from remote locations. Patients will save money that would have been used for travel expenses. Also, since there is a shortage of some specialists, physicians will avail their services to more patients who might not have physical access to them.

The shortage of physicians, mostly in rural areas is leading to the adoption of other telecommunication services as the use of smartphones and home computers for video conferencing. Hospital readmission rates can be reduced by telemedicine as it can prevent medical emergencies. It can also assist in investigating medical emergencies in places where hospitals are far.

Telemedicine is a huge market that is still unexplored. Insurers and employers are beginning to see that is part of medical care and are starting to pay for it. The biggest challenge to the adoption of telemedicine in medical centers is the reluctance of insurers to pay for it. Telemedicine remains an area of discussion in different states as supporters fight to ensure that it is covered by insurance companies. If telemedicine is insured, more clinics and hospitals will emulate Mayo Clinic and integrate it into their services.

Many people are surprised to learn about the tremendous shortage of health care professionals, particularly doctors and nurses. However, this problem has been getting much worse in recent years. It’s happening for a number of different reasons.

For one thing, fewer people can afford the costs of medical school these days. Doctors accumulate so much student loan debt that even with their high salaries, it can take them decades to actually break even. Few people want to take that risk in such bad economic times. Doctors spend more than a decade in training these days, which is a massive undertaking. The rising costs of medical malpractice insurance have made it difficult for doctors to enjoy the wealthy and success that they used to have.

Through the laws of supply and demand, nurses make more money than they used to make, which makes the shortage of nurses good for some people. However, they earn every cent of that money, and nurses work under extremely physically demanding conditions day after day. Few people are going to want to enter a profession that is that stressful. Fortunately, telemedicine could make things much easier for the terribly stressed medical professionals and the patients at the same time.

Telemedicine can allow the few doctors and nurses that are in the profession to expand on their capabilities. They will be able to reach more patients at once. They will also be able to accumulate more data on individual patients due to the plethora of trending data that people can get with telemedicine. As such, doctors and nurses will be able to work smarter and not just harder, which will make all the difference in a profession where there is so much scarcity.

Time is the most scarce resource that medical professionals have today. In the United States in particular, medical costs and other medical resources are also in short supply. Telemedicine can help professionals use all of those resources much more effectively.

ATA Hopes Telemedicine will Lower Consumer Healthcare Costs

James Pike, the incoming president of American Telemedicine Association, gave a plenary speech at the ATA’s annual conference in Minneapolis that was held on 17th May Tuesday morning. James Pike noted that the American Telemedicine Association has strong hopes of telemedicine lowering consumer healthcare costs, although there are still many challenges to be conquered.

In his speech, the incoming ATA president stated that remote care still remains to be an industry and movement in flux. He was quick to note that the industry has grown massively and its maturation is by no accident. However, despite all the positive strides the industry has made to this extent, there is still more important work that has to be done in order to ensure telemedicine’s progress.

Today, more and more payer organizations have stopped considering telemedicine as an add-on, and have since adopted it into their businesses as a critical part of their operations, said Pike. He also noted that the official recognition and increased payments coming from insurers have given credibility and proven that telemedicine continues to be widely embraced. He continued to add that this evolution must not stop; it has to continue for the industry to realize its full potential.

James Pike served under President George W. Bush as the Secretary of Veterans Affairs from the month of December 2007 to January 2009. He is also a senior vice president at Fairfax, the government Virgin-based contractor CGI Federal.

In his speech, Pike continued to say that all the parties involved with telemedicine need to continually evaluate their current state and decide what is important to focus on. They need to look for ways that will drive more people towards adopting this technology for the improvement of their lives. Plus, moving from the traditional hospital-centric system to a patient-centered system is the future.

He ended by noting that easy access, convenience and punctuality are all the aspects that drive telemedicine to lower health costs and hence provide higher value.