Health-care roundup: Providers in N.D. discuss challenges; regulations boosting telehealth expansion will expire soon

Here's a trio of stories about rural health care:

At a roundtable discussion Monday, rural health-care providers in North Dakota spoke to state and federal officials about the difficulties they face. Participants "cited workforce issues, regulations and rising costs as three challenges to provide services in rural areas," Masaki Ova reports for The Jamestown Sun. Officials in attendance included Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D.; Xochitl Torres Small, the Agriculture Department’s undersecretary for Rural Development; and Erin Oban, her North Dakota director.

Rural hospitals had to adapt to survive during the pandemic, aided by federal funding. Some hospitals hope to keep some of those new capabilities, but may not be able to when the federal public-health emergency order expires—drying up funding with it.

Donald Lloyd, CEO of St. Claire Regional HealthCare system in Morehead, Ky., said the shift to telehealth is likely here to stay. "Before the pandemic, telehealth visits weren’t common at his hospital. Now telehealth visits account for nearly 20% of hospital visits," Liz Carey reports for The Daily Yonder. That goes especially for behavioral health, he said, since more than 80% of such visits to the hospital are via telehealth these days.

Speaking of telehealth: Relaxed regulations during the pandemic allowed health-care providers to more easily prescribe buprenorphine for opioid-abuse disorder. Studies have shown that telehealth prescription visits are at least as effective as in-person visits in keeping patients on their medication, but those regulations will expire along with the federal public-health emergency order. "That could come as soon as October, and the Drug Enforcement Agency, which has sought to clamp down on buprenorphine’s misuse, has already missed deadlines to facilitate virtual access," Krista Mahr and Ben Leonard report for Politico. "The expansion across sectors has been critical in rural areas, where access to licensed clinicians is scarce and social stigma runs high."