Healthcare
‘The genie is out of the bottle’: Rural healthcare providers see silver lining to pandemic
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“It’s a sea change.”
That’s how Sylvia Villarreal, CEO and owner of Taos Clinic for Youth, described telemedicine and its place in rural healthcare. Villarreal has offered limited telehealth services, also referred to as telemedicine, to patients for about eight years.
Telehealth refers to healthcare services that are administered remotely between patient and doctor, typically over video using a broadband connection. In theory, telehealth could significantly expand access to healthcare in rural communities. But implementing telehealth across the U.S. has proved challenging for a number of reasons — insurance coverage and reimbursement being one of the larger roadblocks to adoption for providers. After a recent push at the federal level to expand telehealth service reimbursements for Medicaid and Medicare patients in response to COVID-19, one of the biggest challenges to adoption has suddenly been removed.