How Can Feds, MCOs Make Medicaid Telehealth Use Last?

by Peter Johnson

More and more health care is making a permanent move to the internet following the pandemic-driven virtual care boom — which is a big reason why Medicaid MCOs are doing more to bring telehealth and even broadband internet access to their members. That's according to a Sept. 23 panel of federal officials and an insurance executive at the AHIP National Conference on Medicare, Medicaid and Dual Eligibles.

Telehealth coverage expanded:

• "Over the last 18 months, we saw a huge uptake of telehealth in the [U.S.] — it's like nothing we've seen before," said Joanne Jee, policy director and congressional liaison at the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC). "Prior to the pandemic, nearly all states covered some form of telehealth. But what we saw in the pandemic is that all states are covering telehealth in a more expansive way."
• "As far as the services go, there's so much variation in what telehealth coverage looks like across the states. And there isn't a very clear picture yet on what that coverage will look like in the future," Jee added. "We think that certainly there is a lot of potential in telehealth to expand coverage across a number of specialties. That includes primary care, oral health, behavioral health."

Centene aims for 'seamless transition':

• Grant Henderson, vice president for virtual care at Centene Corp., said his firm's Medicaid members "enjoy the modality," citing the way telehealth "removes geographic barriers."
• "The future things that we've got to work on as an industry [include making] sure that there's a seamless transition from an episodic visit to a very consistent, long-term visit, and then a change from a virtual visit from when you do have to go in-person," Henderson said.

Broadband access could be transformative:

• Another crucial issue is broadband access. With the proliferation of high-quality virtual care, the federal government now sees broadband access as a social determinant of health, according to Federal Communications Commission Associate General Counsel Karen Onyeije.
• "If you think about how broadband has transformed the entertainment industry, what we're really trying to think through is, what do we need on the infrastructure side to give health plans and providers an opportunity to be transformative as well?" Onyeije said.

From Health Plan Weekly