Dave Van Demark, a partner in the law firm of McDermott, Will & Emrey, shared his thoughts on whether digital healthcare tool implementation needs a traditional reimbursement model with the National Law Review.
Here's what you should know.
1. Mr. Van Demark said telemedicine and remote monitoring have received a lot of buzz surrounding telemedicine reimbursement. But he poses the question: Do digital health tools need direct reimbursement and what third-party payment programs thrive?
2. Direct reimbursement will help with the development of digital health tools, Mr. Van Demark said. But he counters that point with a question on whether these digital health tools need to fit into the traditional reimbursement landscape to find success.
He believes as the fields looks to private payers for value-based purchasing, population health management and bundled payments, digital health tools can find vaule through improving the quality they can bring to the delivery of healthcare services.
3. Because of a lack of reimbursement based incentives to require the implementation of digital health tools, alternate payment models are allowing providers to use digital health tools however they feel value can be created, Mr. Van Demark said.
4. Mr. Van Demark feels that direct reimbursement should be implemented on a per tool basis. He said telemedicine constitutes "the direct delivery of care very similar to any other doctor-patient encounter." In that case he thinks reimbursement makes sense because it's similar to the way any in-person visit is reimbursed.
Similarly, he feels tools used for provider-to-provider communication, social media or digital patient engagement efforts should not be reimbursed, because direct reimbursement would undercut the tool's value.
5. Mr. Van Demark summarized his argument by saying the question of direct reimbursement is a complicated one with many variables. He feels, however, that a per tool model will be the best way to implement any sort of direct reimbursement policy.
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