Telehealth Medical Billing: The Changing Virtual Care Reimbursements

Traditionally healthcare industry involved many slow processes that made people dislike many things. In this transformational world full of technological advancements, telehealth solutions, and medical billing together as telehealth medical billing has played a major role in the transformation of how healthcare practices deliver care now.

Now as practices include telehealth, they gain by availing easy virtual care visits and also claim submission for reimbursements of telehealth medical billing. For facilitating the transition, many bodies like federal and state laws are constantly finding new ways.

Let’s now see how virtual care rose gradually and its impression on telehealth medical billing.

What Is Virtual Care?

According to a source, virtual healthcare refers to the “virtual visits” that take place between patients and clinicians via communications technology- the video and audio connectivity that allows “virtual” meetings to occur in real-time, from virtually any location.

A virtual visit can be a videoconference between a doctor and a patient at home. It could mean that a patient can interact with an offsite medical specialist via a high-definition conference hookup at his or her local clinic, instead of traveling to another city.

It can also give patients the chance to more readily find qualified second opinions online.

RELATED: Know How To Choose The Best Telehealth Software For Perfect Virtual Care?

Telehealth Medical Billing: An Evaluating Scenario

The COVID-10 pandemic taught us many things. It made many industries reach their consumers somehow by inventing new techniques. In the same way, the healthcare industry first struggled, then eventually found ways not only to reach patients easily but also to make it easier for the patients to get access to the necessary medical aid they needed.

The Health and Human Services (HHS) department of the United States of America, has made the process easier by taking steps for offering telehealth services which made lives easier for patients, through two-way communication tech.

This Eventually Can Make People Think- What Is Telehealth?

Telehealth is nothing but a solution or software which facilitates consultations by using means like video-audio conferences, and wireless applications include services like remote patient monitoring (RPM), and medical education, and facilitates interoperability through which sharing of images and medical reports across different specialties are made easy without interruption.

It is a shortcut to expanding care at a low cost. The features of telehealth provided many benefits thereafter the pandemic, as it became famous and got adopted worldwide. Patients are demanding virtual visits nowadays which made many practices make it a standard process.

Reimbursements Of Telehealth Claims

• For guiding telehealth into existence and achieving this much spread, many revisions to regulatory guidelines by the federal and state bodies, and a long period of continuous trial and error were made.
• At the start, the centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) provided restrictions on the type of services to be provided through telehealth and those that would be qualified for reimbursements.
• Then, telehealth was only meant for those services that were to be provided in person, before the pandemic. You won’t believe it now if we say that many telehealth claims were at the start either denied or reimbursed at poor rates.
• But eventually, CMS as the rescuer of telehealth and patients, gave relaxations to some of the rules, and guess what? Now, more Medicare Fee-For-Service (FFS) services are being able to be billed as telehealth.
• Reimbursements are now made equally with proper documentation. Day by day the healthcare industry is making telehealth services a usual one. To indicate easily the mode using which the services are provided and claims related are reimbursed properly, medical coding modifiers are being used.
• The creation of a different category of codes for services was a result of the new tech advancements which concentrated on the use of Communication Technology-Based Services (CTBS), which is specifically designed to be used in telehealth only.
• CMS lengthened the list of the Medicare services that are to be covered for reimbursement, to initial nursing facilities, emergency visits, visits at home, visits during discharge, and services related to therapy.
• These guidelines apply to all providers who render services from Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC) and Rural Health Clinics (RHCs) and those providers who extend services to those patients who are covered by the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) as well as the Medicaid and Medicare.

Telehealth With Integrations

Since the first declaration of the COVID-19 PHE in January 2020, for two years now, the contribution of telehealth usage resulted in a rocketing increase in patient satisfaction. The people in the rural area were the most benefited from telehealth usage as they lacked sufficient providers for care delivery.

Many independent practices and providers reported using telehealth reduced the costs and increased patient outcomes. Telehealth services are at the minimum now covered by most health insurance plans.

Obstacles

• The lack of thorough knowledge and familiarity can become a hindrance to the usage of telehealth with the older generation people who are used to the traditional way of receiving care.
• The internet problems, like speed, and unavailability of internet services in rural areas may create a barrier for people there to avail the telehealth services.
• Confidentiality becomes compromised sometimes because of not being able to ensure patients are in locations where they can preserve their privacy.
• Improperly secured connections and unauthorized internet services may pave way for digital security breaches.
• These problems result in forming legal and regulatory implementations which include strict standards, rules, and guidelines that may vary from state to state.

Moving Forward To The Future Successfully

Telehealth became famous worldwide with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. What started as a temporary adjustment ended up becoming a standard process for providing care. And as telehealth medical billing is mostly reimbursable these days, its usage will become a hit now and in the future.

Integration of telehealth with EHR and practice management will benefit well for practices and independent providers. These are some innovative technology solutions that cannot be avoided if you want to become the no.1 in the game.

Integrating telehealth will ensure total compliance with regulatory rules and guidelines and be billed accordingly. Welcome to Vozo– a friend you can rely upon with telehealth and other products to fulfill your caring for your patients.

Vozo Telehealth Solutions are the smart choice for delivering care remotely. You can schedule and conduct virtual visits directly from your EHR without any additional software. Our HIPAA-compliant, easy-to-use Video Visits are specially designed for primary care physicians and specialists that let you provide immediate excellent patients care quickly. Easy patient engagement through chat and secure messages.

With seamless integration to the Vozo EHR and practice management software, you can schedule and conduct visits directly from your EHR platform. Visit our website for more products.

“Improve your workflow efficiency by facilitating integrated telehealth”