In a report for The Rural Blog, information technology experts and telehealth company presidents testified in front of The Subcommittee on Communications, Media, and Broadband in the Senate last Thursday, asking senators to keep telehealth regulations as they are from the COVID-19 pandemic. Without them, rural hospitals would be unable to use or even access certain telehealth services once the regulations expire.
From the report: “Deanna Larson, president of telehealth company Avel eCare, testified that affordability is the biggest barrier to broadband adoption, and urged lawmakers to broaden telehealth regulations so more hospitals can use it. “Larson urged Congress to extend or make permanent their regulatory flexibility toward telehealth especially as it relates to being neutral on the kinds of telemedicine, such as phone-only care, asynchronous care, and remote patient monitoring,” Riley Steward reports for Broadband Breakfast, a site that advocates for better broadband access. “An economic benefit of which would be keeping medical commerce local, she said. Patients wouldn’t be required as often to move to a higher level of care out of town.”
Widespread telehealth availability could save the health care system an estimated $305 billion a year, Federal Communications Commission member Brendan Carr said at the hearing, Steward reports.”
To read the rest of the report, click here.
SOURCE: The Rural Blog
