By Eric Wicklund, mHealth Intelligence | May 3, 2019
A bill passed by lawmakers and headed to the governor’s desk would create a telehealth advisory council, state coordinator and telehealth administration simplification working group to push connected health adoption in Hawaii.
Add Hawaii to the growing list of states looking to consolidate its various telehealth and telemedicine laws and guidelines into one comprehensive policy.
Lawmakers in the Aloha State recently approved a bill to create a strategic telehealth advisory council, a state telehealth and health care access coordinator and a telehealth administrative simplification working group. The bill, SB 1246, now heads to the governor’s desk for his signature.
The bill aims to give the state direction in promoting telehealth adoption and reducing barriers that have kept healthcare providers from embracing connected care.
Armed with a 2017 Hawaii Physician Workforce Assessment study that found only 15 percent of the state’s physicians using telehealth – an increase of less than 5 percent in three years – lawmakers that year enacted legislation aimed at expanding adoption. The bill mandated that the state’s Medicaid programs cover any service provided through telehealth that is covered in-person, removed any geographical limits – including the requirement that a practitioner be with a patient who is using telehealth – and established payment parity.
“However, despite this favorable policy environment, telehealth utilization remains frustratingly low,” the new bill states. “A continuum of issues across multiple sectors must be addressed, such as incentives for provider adoption, patient comfort with new technology, health care workforce training, technology and telecommunications infrastructure, and administrative simplification between health systems.”
The bill calls on the state to “promote telehealth to deliver health care from a distance as an effective way of overcoming certain barriers to accessing care, particularly for communities located in rural and remote areas,” and urges the Department of Health to “lead statewide efforts to ensure consumer choice, reduce disparities in access to care, enhance health care provider availability, and improve quality of care through telehealth.”
And they’ll have help.
The state strategic telehealth advisory council will be composed of at least 11 members, appointed by the governor, and will be dissolved on July 1, 2022. This council, the bill states, “shall advise the governor in the development and implementation of a comprehensive plan to establish telehealth as high quality, cost-effective, and reliable means of health care access.”
In addition, the bill calls for a full-time state telehealth and health care access coordinator to support the advisory council, working with various state departments, the private sector, healthcare systems and the University of Hawai’i.
Finally, the bill calls for a telehealth administration simplification working group, established by the Department of Health, “to research and make recommendations to reduce administrative barriers to telehealth, which may include health care system credentialing, privileging, and other processes that contribute to delays and inefficiencies for health care providers delivering care to patients.” That group will report back to the Legislature before the 2020 Legislature convenes.
The bill, scheduled to take effect on July 1, sets aside at least $110,000 per year to fund the process, including the coordinator’s salary.