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"FCC to CMS: Reimburse for mHealth."

From Brian Dolan at mobihealthnews, the FCC's National Broadband Plan offers advice to CMS on paying for what's referred to as eCare;
"The FCC had a few suggestions for how the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) could help eCare services, including mobile health, get to market quicker. As we have noted many times in the past, the business model question is one of the biggest hang-ups for wireless health, especially since reimbursement has been slow to come for many wireless health services. The FCC has a few ideas about that. Here are four suggestions from the FCC:

1. HHS should identify e-care applications whose use could be immediately incented through outcomes-based reimbursement.

2. When testing new payment models, HHS should explicitly include e-care applications and evaluate their impact on the models. Where proven and scalable, these alternative payment models would provide an additional solution for incenting e-care.

3. For nascent e-care applications, HHS should support further pilots and testing that review their suitability for reimbursement.

4. As outcomes-based payment reform is developed, CMS should seek to proactively reimburse for e-care technologies under current payment models.

The FCC recognizes that outcomes-based payment reform is not necessarily coming any time soon, so CMS should “proactively reimburse” for eCare technologies using payment models currently in use under fee-for-service."


I'm not sure that one government agency always likes taking advice from another, but it's an interesting addition to the debate about re-making health care.


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