CMS Rule Change Adopts Connect Health Initiative Recommendations
for Remote Patient Monitoring
Today, the Connected Health Initiative (CHI) secured a huge victory for telehealth innovators, connected device makers, pioneering physicians, and patients across America.
The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) introduced final rulemaking featuring a CHI provision that enables doctors to leverage remote monitoring tools and use patient-generated health data in their medical practice. Specifically, the rulemaking included changes authored by CHI that provide doctors and healthcare providers with financial incentives, similar to those for the use of established technologies, for the use of remote monitoring tools.
The Connected Health Initiative’s Executive Director Morgan Reed issued the following statement:
“These new rules are an important step forward for America’s connected health innovators, doctors, and most importantly patients. Until now, connected health technologies have been effectively locked out of the most important part of America’s healthcare system, Medicare and Medicaid.”
“Previous CMS rules created serious disincentives for doctors to consider using new technologies. Together with our advisory board, CHI pushed for newly enacted rules that finally level the playing field for innovators, giving doctors and patients the chance to take advantage of the best technologies available.
CHI is dedicated to advocating on behalf of telehealth and remote patient monitoring priorities, while actively removing restrictions that hinder their use.
“The new reimbursement rule changes validate not only Aces, but all people and organizations working to improve healthcare delivery on a national scale,” said AcesHealth President David Heenan. “This represents a major improvement in the process, outcomes, and most importantly, accessibility of the healthcare system. This change will enhance accessibility to healthcare services for those that need it most: working parents who can’t miss a day in the office, chronically ill seniors with mobility issues, economically disenfranchised patients who can’t afford ongoing specialist visits, people with disabilities. I hope this shift in regulations will empower the next generation of healthcare providers to fully leverage the latest technology to improve the lives of their patients.”
The Connected Health Initiative’s change to CMS rulemaking is reflected in the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) improvement activity entitled “Engage Patients and Families to Guide Improvement in the System of Care.” This would enable participating doctors who use remote monitoring and/or telehealth technologies to receive Advancing Care Information (ACI) program points for activities like sending medication reminders, collecting, monitoring, and reviewing patient’s physiological data, and prescribing patient education.
The CMS rulemaking put forth by CHI is based in the belief that the CMS system should support and incentivize doctors’ use of remote monitoring and patient generated health data in their broader medical treatment and care.
