Telehealth Should Be Lasting Care Mode, Not a Temporary Measure

Prior to COVID-19, some of the patients seeing dermatologist Jack Resneck Jr., MD, had to drive several hours to his practice to get care for serious chronic conditions. In some cases, those in-person visits were absolutely necessary, but Dr. Resneck wanted more options for telehealth and few payers were offering coverage for virtual visits.

The pandemic changed everything, said Dr. Resneck, the AMA’s president-elect and professor and vice chair of dermatology at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. Telehealth skyrocketed early in the pandemic because the payment and regulatory barriers were removed temporarily to enable patients to stay safer at home.

Although 30 states now have telemedicine parity laws in place, outdated Medicare rules could roll back provisions, jeopardizing telehealth access for seniors. During a recent episode of “AMA Moving Medicine,” Dr. Resneck talks about AMA’s advocacy efforts to retain telehealth coverage, both in the Medicare and commercial space, and why this option is so crucial to patient care.