Pandemic telehealth boom has significant ramifications, including more competition for local providers

"A year into the pandemic, telehealth has become widely accepted," Matt Volz reports for Kaiser Health News. "Some states are now looking to make permanent the measures that have fueled its growth. But with it have come some unintended consequences, such as a rise in fraud, potential access problems for vulnerable groups and conflicts between out-of-state and in-state health providers."

Volz's object example is Montana, where largest behavioral provider of behavioral health care worries that it could lose a significant number of its privately insured patients to the Minnesota-based Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, which doesn't accept patients covered by Medicaid and "expects to offer telehealth services in all 50 states within two years."

Citing Rimrock CEO Lenette Kosovich, Volz writes, "The difference in insurance reimbursement rates between the two is so great that the loss of those privately insured patients would hamper Rimrock’s operations. . . . She would like to see rules in place ensuring that out-of-state providers that enter Montana via the relaxed regulations of the pandemic meet the same licensing requirements as in-state providers."

Behavioral health care is already scarce in many rural areas. "A federal government survey estimated that a shortage of mental health providers exist in 5,800 geographic areas," Volz notes.

UPDATE, March 19: A new lobbying coalition has formed to make the shift to telehealth "more permanent," reports Erin Brodwin of Stat News. "The telehealth boom has made one thing clear: The era of health care provided exclusively within the confines of a clinic or hospital is over."