How to Keep Your Telehealth Visits After the Pandemic Ends

Telehealth has been defined by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) as the exchange of medical information from one site to another through electronic communication to improve a patient’s health.(3) However, this definition has been broadened by some to span the use of information and telecommunications technologies in health care delivery for a specific patient involving a provider across distance or time.(2) Although some expansive definitions of telehealth cover both synchronous (audio and video enabled live visits), and asynchronous technologies (e.g. remote patient monitoring), the synchronous technologies such as video visits, have been boosted by the current pandemic in unprecedented ways. But barriers to telehealth visit adoption have persisted, including disparities in access, technological limitations especially pertaining to limited broadband availability in underserved areas, reimbursement, medical licensure issues across state lines, and scalability.