Telemedicine, which remotely links doctors and patients through mediums such as video conferencing and e-mail, is increasingly moving toward becoming a mainstream health care service, according to REACH Health 2016 U.S. Telemedicine Industry Benchmark Survey.

In the survey, out of 390 health care executives, physicians, nurses and other professionals surveyed, two-thirds described telemedicine as one of their highest priorities — if not the highest — for their health care organization. That response indicates a 10 percent increase in comparison to the company's 2015 survey.

“Telemedicine decision-making is rapidly moving from individual departments and specialties to an enterprise initiative,” said Steve McGraw, President and CEO of REACH Health, in a statement, “Both hospitals and health systems reported significant increases in the average number of telemedicine service lines which are active or being implemented in concert.”
The consulting firm Towers Watson recently reported that 37 percent of employers offered telemedicine as a benefit to their employees in 2015, and another 34 percent are considering it for 2016 to 2017.

Even though telemedicine programs vary for different medical specialties, all service lines in the survey still had a high degree of activity in terms of planning and implementation. In the REACH survey, the top three most common objectives for telemedicine programs were improving patient outcome, improving patient convenience and increasing patient engagement and satisfaction.

Though telemedicine has become more common, two factors impeding its growth are issues involving reimbursement, both government and private, with four-fifths of respondents saying it's the biggest challenge, and limitations of the EMR or EHR, with 86 percent saying it causes problems in their organization.

Physician-provided telemedicine services are usually covered and reimbursed by Medicaid health plans, according to the American Telemedication Association. However, some plans deliberate coverage based on a prescribed set of health conditions or services, place restrictions on patient or provider setting, the frequency of covered telemedicine encounters, or exclude services performed by other medical professionals.

In 2015, Alaska lawmakers did not have any proposed legislation ensuring coverage and reimbursement for telemedicine under private insurance or state employee health plans, according to the ATA. In Colorado, Medicaid does not limit reimbursement to a distant site provider if a patient is located elsewhere.

Additionally, the new REACH report found that the degree of focus of the telemedicine program manager was strongly linked with success, and that executive support helped with adequacy of funding.

“Based on the survey data and our experience working with many providers, it’s not surprising that executive support is so important to telemedicine success,” said McGraw. “Using an enterprise approach, hospital leadership seeks to replicate the well-documented improvements in care across multiple service lines and at affiliated hospitals.”

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