Vulnerable Virginians can’t wait for telehealth reforms
The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us many lessons. One is that we can’t go back to a health care system hobbled by limits on patient access to personalized care, especially for vulnerable populations. Topping the list of life-saving care is ensuring broad access to telehealth.
When the pandemic arrived, forward-thinking lawmakers saw that telehealth would be a crucial part of the solution. Congress temporarily suspended numerous regulations to give Americans access to telehealth as a safety measure. That included allowing Medicare recipients to access virtual care. As a result, patients could receive care through widely available technology such as audio-only phone calls, online video platforms, emails and instant messages.
Two years later, it’s clear that removing telehealth barriers at the start of the pandemic expanded access and slowed the spread of the virus. These flexibilities helped us navigate the most treacherous months and kept millions safe. Without telehealth expansion, outcomes would have been much worse.
From June 2019 to June 2020, the number of Medicare enrollees who engaged in telehealth jumped from 134,000 to more than 10 million — a 7,400% increase. Individuals who use telehealth saw their monthly health expenses plummet 61% during the pandemic, according to a study co-authored by Americans for Prosperity and the Progressive Policy Institute.
U.S. Latinos and Hispanics have been one of the populations hardest hit by the pandemic.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that Hispanics and Latinos are 1.5 times more likely to contract COVID-19, 2.4 times more likely to be hospitalized, and 1.9 times more likely to die because of the virus. Telehealth has been — and will continue to be — a bridge between this population and urgently needed care.
An Urban Institute report found that Hispanic adults were significantly more likely to use telehealth than white adults. Another study by Anthem concluded that Latinos used telehealth for mental health conditions at higher rates than other Americans.
Telehealth also helps Latinos communicate with doctors more frequently, increasing our access to preventive care. A United Health Foundation report concluded that Latinos often put off going to the doctor for regular checkups and often resort to emergency room visits when sick. This not only affects individual Latino families, but drives up overall health care costs.
Our priority should be to make it easier for our community to get screened for diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, cancer and mental health. Expanding telehealth breaks down the barriers that discourage Latinos from accessing these types of life-saving care.
In Virginia, lawmakers are getting the picture. During the current legislative session, they passed three bills with overwhelming bipartisan support to strengthen and expand telehealth.
But more needs to be done. Federal reforms are limited to the COVID-19 health emergency. Although Congress recently extended some telehealth services for an additional five months, unless lawmakers make these changes permanent, millions of Virginians — many of them Latinos or Hispanics — may lose access to critical health services when Washington declares the crisis over.
We urge Virginia’s congressional delegation to support a number of bipartisan bills — the CONNECT for Health Act, Protecting Rural Telehealth Act, and the Telehealth Modernization Act. These bills would allow
Virginians on high-deductible insurance plans to use telehealth as a pre-deductible service, while removing geographic and originating-site restrictions to ensure that Medicare recipients have access to virtual care where they need it.
It’s time to make these changes permanent. While telehealth can never replace in-person care, it has become a vital component of the overall mix of health care services. Congress now has the power to unleash a digital health revolution by expanding telehealth, saving not only lives by creating cost-savings for individuals and taxpayers.
Failure to act will result in tens of millions of Americans — particularly our most vulnerable populations — losing access to care. We can’t allow that to happen.