The Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill yesterday that would expand a successful New Mexico telehealth program onto the national stage. Project ECHO is a hub-and-spoke model for connecting specialists at academic medical centers with primary care physicians via teleconferencing technologies. Because there is no remote patient monitoring technology or direct patient-doctor communication via...
The American Medical Association spent some portion of the $3.87 million it spent on lobbying this quarter trying to kill part of a telemedicine provision in a Senate bill, as did the American Association of Family Physicians, which spent a total of $1.46 million. Politico broke the news.
The bill in question, S-2943, is a lengthy appropriations bill for the Department of Defense. In section 705...
Following the publication of the FCC National Broadband Plan a new term entered the mobile health and connected health industries' lexicon: "eCare." The FCC adopted this term to serve as an umbrella concept for "the electronic exchange of information -- data, images and video -- to aid in the practice of medicine and advanced analytics. Encompasses technologies that enable video consultation,...
On page 526 of the more than 2,300 page healthcare reform bill that President Barack Obama signed earlier this week is a proposal for states to support the use of wireless health technology for chronic disease management: "A proposal for use of health information technology in providing health home services under this section and improving service delivery and coordination across the care...
According to a report in the Washington Post, a bill recently passed by the Senate Finance and Health Committees, includes a provision that more than doubles the potential rewards and penalties that employers can use to incentivize or motivate employees to lose weight, lower cholesterol, stop smoking or lower their BMI.
"A single employee whose annual premiums cost him and his employer the...
With a 61-37 vote, the U.S. Senate passed its $838B version of the economic stimulus bill, which included more than $20 billion for health IT spending. Now the joint House-Senate conference committee needs to resolve the differences between the Senate and House bills, which each call for different funding levels to accelerate adoption of health IT and different language in the IT policy and...
