Senate Blowback Challenges Legalities of Telemedicine Mobile App

With astonishing new applications being developed every day, mobile apps are changing the world we live in. Telemedicine and telehealth apps, in particular, are no different. Even though such apps boast incredible potential to analyze data, save time, and provide patient diagnosis from anywhere, growing pains are inevitable.

Serious questions arising from the new found mobility of medical services caused a recent Senate bill, known as Defense authorization bill (S-2943), to face opposition. One provision in the bill, which bases reimbursement and liability on the location of the provider, caused the Senate to fear a scenario under which state licensing boards would lack the authority to discipline physicians practicing medicine outside state borders. Given what mobile medical apps are largely designed to do, a scenario like this is easy to imagine.

In addition to out-of-state physicians potentially circumventing accountability, the American Medical Association (AMA) contends that removing such an essential, protective mechanism will diminish acceptable standards of care while creating the need for a “national medical license”. Understandably, doctor groups have opposed such arrangements, saying they undermine medical licensure. Even though barriers like this would seem to stand in the way of subsequent telemedicine and telehealth app innovation, this provision is not being viewed as insurmountable by either side. In fact, the bill eventually passed in the Senate, with the subsection included, but the House sent it back with an amendment removing most of the telemedicine language. In spite of such relatively minor setbacks, mobile app innovation is ramping up all over the healthcare industry.

With the help of San Francisco based mobile app company Appstem, even traditional companies like Kaiser Permanente have launched mobile apps that allow on the go, health plan members to easily schedule appointments, send and receive secure messaging, refill prescriptions,access medical records, and locate Kaiser Permanente medical facilities. These new breed of apps are doing their part to overcome the inevitable growing pains sure to occur as the healthcare industry moves toward the latest in mobile app technology.

Contact Appstem to learn more about telemedicine apps today!