{
  "id": "R44437",
  "type": "CRS Report",
  "typeId": "REPORTS",
  "number": "R44437",
  "active": true,
  "source": "EveryCRSReport.com",
  "versions": [
    {
      "source": "EveryCRSReport.com",
      "id": 451239,
      "date": "2016-03-29",
      "retrieved": "2016-04-06T16:51:55.924819",
      "title": "Telehealth and Telemedicine: Description and Issues",
      "summary": "Telehealth is the use of electronic information and telecommunications technologies to support remote clinical health care, patient and professional health-related education, public health, and other health care delivery functions. A narrower concept, telemedicine, refers to clinical services that are provided remotely via telecommunications technologies. Some sources use the two terms interchangeably, and there is no consensus among federal programs and among health care providers on the definition of either term.\nFederal involvement in telehealth is varied. As of 2014, more than 20 federal agencies were engaged in some aspect of telehealth. For example, in FY2015, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) was the largest telehealth provider in the federal government, providing 2.1 million telehealth consultations to some 677,000 veterans. In contrast, the Medicare (Part B) program, covering more than 52 million beneficiaries, the number of telehealth visits increased fivefold from 38,000 telehealth consultations (or visits) in 2009 to 192,692 in 2015. The VA, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Institute of Medicine, and other stakeholders have identified barriers associated with the use of telehealth, notably that some telehealth modalities have a stronger evidence base than others. Furthermore, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), key issues requiring additional research are the impact of telehealth on individual and population health, and on moving away from traditional fee structures toward rewarding clinicians for value versus volume of care. \nTelehealth has been an active legislative issue thus far in the 114th Congress. For example, in February 2016, bipartisan legislation was introduced to expand telehealth reimbursement for remote patient monitoring under the Medicare program. In December 2015, the Senate Committee on Finance published options for expanding telehealth utilization for Medicare beneficiaries with chronic conditions. H.R. 6, the 21st Century Cures Act (as passed by the House), would require CMS and the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission to submit programmatic information to Congress on telehealth. The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA; P.L. 114-10) includes a provision that encourages the use of telehealth as an element in the new Merit-Based Incentive Payment System and requires the Government Accountability Office to study telehealth and its use under the Medicare program. \nThis report identifies telehealth activities at select federal agencies along with an assessment of the evidence regarding the potential impact of telehealth on health care access, cost, and quality.",
      "type": "CRS Report",
      "typeId": "REPORTS",
      "active": true,
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      "topics": []
    }
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Foreign Affairs",
    "Health Policy",
    "National Defense"
  ]
}