Are state telemedicine parity laws associated with greater use of telemedicine in the emergency department?

Abstract

Background: Telemedicine is a valuable tool to improve access to specialty care in emergency departments (EDs), and states have passed telemedicine parity laws requiring insurers to reimburse for telemedicine visits. Our objective was to determine if there is an association between such laws and the use of telemedicine in an ED. Methods: As part of the 2016 and 2017 National ED Inventory-USA surveys, directors of all 5404 EDs in the United States were surveyed on the use of telemedicine. States were divided into those with any form of telemedicine parity law and those without (as of January 2016). We investigated the association between a telemedicine parity law and the use of telemedicine controlling for ED characteristics; state was included as a random intercept. Results: In 2016, among the 50 states and the District of Columbia (DC), 21 (41%) had a telemedicine parity law, whereas 30 (59%) did not. Among the 4418 ED respondents to the telemedicine question (82% response rate), 2352 (53%) received telemedicine. The proportion of EDs receiving telemedicine varied widely across the states and DC, ranging from 13% in DC to 89% in Maine. Neither the presence nor duration of state telemedicine parity laws were independently associated with ED receipt of telemedicine in 2016 nor the adoption of telemedicine from 2016 to 2017. Conclusion: Telemedicine parity laws were not associated with use of telemedicine in the ED. These results suggest that other factors are driving the wide variation in ED use of telemedicine across states.

An Overview of Telehealth in the Management of Cardiovascular Disease: A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association

“…Moreover, there are data to suggest that neither the presence nor the duration of state parity laws are associated with adoption of telehealth. 92 Thus, more research on the effect of reimbursement changes to telehealth implementation is needed.…”

COVID-19 pandemic and quick evolution of telemedicine: A gap analysis

“…Journal of medical in western china using the network synergizes Internet research with 5G service, a smartphone app, and an existing telemedicine system 2 Exploring the adoption of telemedicine and virtual Bokolo, A. J. (2021) 28 The author have explored the factors impacting software for care of outpatients during and after the adoption of telemedicine and virtual COVID- ( 2021) 36 emergency and the payment policy from issuers, effect the use of telemedicine and also described factors for implementation, such as regulatory environment, ease of interstate credentialing, and even the extent of payment parity 11 Africa turns to telemedicine to close mental health gap Paul Adepoju (2020) 37 The article draws attention to increase use of telemedicine during pandemic in most African country as seen by increase in traffic in help-lines and effectiveness of telemedicine for mental health is on par with one-on -one counseling in order to deliver quality medical opinions on outpatient basis even to the remotest areas during Covid-19 pandemic. Brief review of the literature describing utility and limitation of various aspect of telemedicine done in many countries such as Norway, Africa, Australia, USA, India and China is presented in (Table 1).…”

“…Brief review of the literature describing utility and limitation of various aspect of telemedicine done in many countries such as Norway, Africa, Australia, USA, India and China is presented in (Table 1). [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42]…”