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Extending the range of
home tele-services that can be
brought to today's patients. |
August 2007
Medicaid & Home Telehealthcare: It’s Time
 This installment of the Home Telehealth Community of Care focuses on introducing Medicaid decision makers to the potential for using home telehealthcare under Medicaid. Why now? Think phenomenal expenses to Medicaid (without telehealthcare service use) that are incurred by burgeoning numbers of people living long term with diabetes, heart disease, and a host of other chronic conditions that require regular monitoring.
That’s 50 million+ Medicaid enrollees costing more than $300 billion annually. Think excess, period. Details about this spending are provided in the Medicaid Pays segment below.
We need to of course look at the big ticket items—among these are elderly recipients living with chronic diseases and conditions, many using ER visits and hospital stays as a matter of course. But it doesn’t end there: oftentimes these same patients return home and also return to square one—no long-term care for prevention and ensuring daily wellness. The cycle continues of trips to ER and hospitals and back home.
All of these factors alone say telehealthcare, to provide more frequent contact with Medicaid patients to help them stay well. And today, payment by Medicaid for home telehealth is (slowly) in the offing—take a look at which states are making progress in the Medicaid Pays for Home Telehealth segment below.
But let’s look beyond simply telemonitoring vital signs as the sole use of tele-healthcare-- as if only that use of home telehealthcare will “fix” things … That approach has been a giant stumbling point to changing long-term care at home. A more inclusive definition of telehealthcare today has to be this:
Home telehealthcare: Not just telemonitoring vital signs but using telecommunications to educate, coach, and ensure safekeeping at home of our elders who want to live there.
See the Look Homeward segment below for word from home healthcare providers who have tried using home telehealth with Medicaid patients, and details on what worked, and what’s still needed particularly for assisting Medicaid patients.
In our Coming Home segment, Kim Anderson, RN and CEO of Rural Health Advantage (Chariton, IA) provides a broader view on the specifics that we need to know on the value of keeping the long-term Medicaid population well and at home using telehealth. Details are also provided on her work in getting Medicaid funding established in the state of Iowa—using very small steps at a time, but making progress nonetheless!
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