October 14, 2020 – Telehealth services have become more integrated since the pandemic began. The Coalition to Protect Our Telehealth has asked the Illinois General Assembly to make Governor Pritzker’s executive order that allows a patient to confer with their doctor via video chat a state law. If passed, the law would prevent insurance providers and others from classifying a telehealth visit differently from an in-person visit or requiring a different set of practitioners instead of the patient’s current doctor.
“Treat telehealth like you treat in-patient and in-person services so that the coverage that’s available to patients from commercial health plans, Medicaid, Medicare, across the board, is available, and ensure that providers are reimbursed on a similar basis,” Illinois Health and Hospital Association spokesman Danny Chun said. “That’s how you can sustain all of the advances that have been made in telehealth over the past few months.”
In a July report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, researchers found that nearly half of Illinois residents who required care in the month of April used telehealth services. In June when in-person care visits began to fully resume, one in five state residents used telehealth.
