Sneak Preview: CMS Urged To Help States Boost Medicaid Telehealth
(The following is excerpted from a recent Thompson Grants 360 article.) The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) plans to provide more support to help states provide behavioral health services to Medicaid enrollees using telehealth options, in response to a recent report by the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG).
Even before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, states were increasingly relying on telehealth to provide services such as mental health assessments, individual therapy and medication management for Medicaid enrollees, particularly in rural and underserved areas with provider shortages. States have expanded their use of telehealth services during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As part of a review conducted in January and February 2020, just before the start of the pandemic, OIG assessed challenges in providing Medicaid telehealth services in 37 states. Officials from 34 of these states reported multiple challenges, including the lack of training among providers and enrollees, limited internet connectivity, difficulties with providers’ protecting the privacy and security of enrollees’ personal information, the high cost of telehealth and costs associated with solving interoperability issues, OIG states in the report (OEI-02-19-00400).
Another challenge states face is the lack of licensing reciprocity. Although telehealth allows states to leverage providers from other states to offer services to enrollees, many states require providers to be licensed in the state where the enrollee is located. OIG noted that licensing requirements can be burdensome for providers since they often must pay a fee for each state license, in addition to the time spent and the administrative effort to acquire separate licenses and periodically renew them. OIG explained that states can potentially ease these burdens through license reciprocity, which allows practitioners who are licensed in one state to practice in another state without obtaining another license. However, some states are reluctant to offer license reciprocity because they do not want to lose the revenue received from licensure fees or do not want to increase competition for health care services in their state, OIG added.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, CMS has taken some actions to support the expansion of telehealth services. It maintains a website on Medicaid telehealth and has issued a toolkit ― which contains Frequently Asked Questions, policy considerations and examples from states about their telehealth programs ― to help states expand their use of telehealth for Medicaid enrollees.
(The full version of this story has now been made available to all for a limited time here.)
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