Page 17 50 State Telemedicine Gaps Analysis Coverage and Reimbursement

50 State Telemedicine Gaps Analysis: Coverage & Reimbursement

E. Eligible Technologies

Telemedicine includes the use of numerous technologies to exchange medical information from
one site to another via electronic communications. The technologies closely associated with
services enabled by telemedicine include videoconferencing, the transmission of still images
(also known as store-and-forward), remote patient monitoring (RPM) of vital signs, and
telephone calls. For this report, we measured components of state Medicaid policies that allow
or prohibit the coverage and/or reimbursement of telemedicine when using these technologies.

Scale – Medicaid: Eligible
Technologies
A 5 points
B 4 points
C 3 points
F ≤ 2 points

Figure 8

Ten states score above average on our scale with Alaska taking the highest ranking (Figure 8).
The state covers telemedicine when providers use interactive audio-video, store-and-forward,
remote patient monitoring, and audio conferencing for some telemedicine encounters. Alabama,
Alaska, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, and Texas all cover telemedicine when using
synchronous technology as well as store-and-forward and remote patient monitoring in some
capacity. Fifty-seven percent of the states ranked the lowest with failing (F) scores either
because they only cover synchronous only or provide no coverage for telemedicine at all.

Further, Idaho, Missouri, North Carolina and South Carolina prohibit the use of “cell phone
video” to facilitate a telemedicine encounter.
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American Telemedicine Association
2015