WASHINGTON, D.C. – This week’s guidance from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services regarding the Rural Health Transformation Program shows promise towards achieving the goals of the initiative.
“The guidance provides a broadly positive framework for the expanded adoption of emerging digital health technology that CHI called for,” said Brian Scarpelli, executive director of the Connected Health Initiative. “Throughout, CMS explicitly embraced several key CHI recommendations including encouraging the adoption of cloud services, prioritizing interoperability, and a requirement for broad stakeholder input to the application and on a continuing basis. While wearable devices were not explicitly mentioned, CHI believes the guidance’s emphasis on evidence-based interventions, namely remote patient monitoring tools and services, to improve prevention and treatment of disease shows an openness to the proven clinical benefit of wearable devices. Ultimately, to best serve patients, all states should make wearable adoption, and the leveraging of the patient-generated health data they provide, a central pillar in their plans.”
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