A bill requiring health plans in Colorado to provide health care services delivered through telehealth has passed through the House. House Bill 1029, sponsored by Rep. Perry Buck, R-Windsor. The bill would provide coverage for telehealth in any area of the state. Buck has called the bill “revolutionary” for the delivery of health care in the state.

Ben Price, Executive Director of the Colorado Association of Health Plans, the trade association of the state’s private insurance carriers, says his organization is throwing its support behind the bill.

What do you view as the importance of this bill in the delivery of health care?

“We see it as a win-win. It’s a priority to modernize our ability to use all the tools that are available to us. If we have this technology, and we can’t use it, it does no one any good — particularly in a state like Colorado that is so rural. We’ve already seen great success with treating stroke in the mountains where we used to wait for a helicopter to arrive and fly the patient back to Denver. We know minutes count in case of stroke. We’ve been using telehealth for a while now and with a great deal of success. That’s just one example of where we could use it. This could bring folks access to specialists when they used to have to travel to Denver from the far eastern plains of the southwest corner of the state to be seen. It also greatly enhances our physicians’ ability to do followup care. Physicians have said followup care is difficult depending on the patient’s ability to travel. This may cut down on the necessity to travel for the followup.”

What type of provider care is covered under the telehealth bill?

“Telehealth would be covered and can be used where a patient would also have coverage for a face-to-face visit, like primary care or mental health visits or specialty care if the specialty can provide that care via telehealth. You know, there may be some condition where you just absolutely need that face-to-face visit. It’s certainly not the vision of our industry to force anyone to use telehealth. If the patient wants to see that physician face-to-face, or, if a physician says, ‘This patient needs to be seen face-to-face,’ this is not intended to stand in the way.”

What kind of patients will benefit most from this bill?

“This is not really just about providing care to people who are in far-flung geographic areas. One of the doctors at the hearing talked about a patient who actually lives 20 minutes from his office but because of her condition can’t get to his office. The passage of this bill will really open access to better care, will enable the carriers to provide quality care in areas where maybe they weren’t able to expand to before. I also think this can provide care from providers that are out of state. In the past, we’ve had to fly patients out of state to the Mayo Clinic or to Johns Hopkins or somewhere where there’s only one or two specialists in the nation. We may be able to keep people close to their homes for the care they need, and close to their families.

Do you foresee more telehealth legislation in the future?

“From our perspective, three things needed to be done in the state to modernize telehealth. We needed to pass a bill to remove mention of providing telehealth in areas with only less than 150,000. This bill covers that part. What this bill doesn’t cover, and what we either need the Board of Medicine and the Board of Pharmacy to take care of, or a bill to take care of, is pharmacy prescribing; and then that the relationship between patient and physician can be established via telehealth. Right now, that relationship has to be initially established with a face-to-face meeting. We’re exploring whether there should be a discussion about expanding this bill.”