Health and Media

The digital age takes embodied things and offers virtual substitutes, moving entire realms of human interaction and engagement from the physical marketplace to the computer screen. Some of these substitutes have meaningful upsides. But in many cases, the virtual substitutes are clearly inferior to what they’re replacing. But this substitution nonetheless succeeds and deepens because of the power of distraction.

The Greene County (AL) Health System, with only three doctors, has no intensive care unit or surgical services.

The Federal government took a range of steps to expedite the adoption and awareness of telehealth. Some of the telehealth flexibilities have been made permanent while others are temporary. Telehealth policies allow:

Senators Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Mark Warner (D-VA), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), Peter Welch (D-VT), and John Barrasso (R-WY) led a bipartisan group of 60 senators in reintroducing the Creating Opportunities Now for Necessary and Effective Care Technologies (CONNECT) for Health Act. The CONNECT for Health Act will expand coverage of telehealth services through Medicare, make COVID-19 telehealth flexibilities permanent, improve health outcomes, and make it easier for patients to connect with their doctors.

Why is the government risking a return to a healthcare regulatory regime that results in worse outcomes, less access to care and higher costs? The motives are unclear, but that would be the outcome if Congress lets the current regulatory framework for telehealth and hospital-at-home lapse, which it will if not renewed in 2025. The arguments to extend the waivers, as laid out in a letter from more than 350 healthcare organizations, are powerful.  Extensions will:

The Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition commends the Federal Communications Commission for granting a 60-day extension of the Funding Year 2025 Rural Health Care Program application filing window, moving the deadline from April 1, 2025, to June 2, 2025.

Artificial Intelligence systems designed to predict the likelihood of a hospitalized patient dying largely aren't detecting worsening health conditions, according to a new study. Some machine learning models trained exclusively on existing patient data didn't recognize about 66 percent of injuries that could lead to patient death in the hospital, according to the research published in Nature's Communications Medicine journal. Researchers 

Patients across the rural South, Appalachia, and remote West are most often unable to make a video call to their doctor or log into their patient portals. Both are essential ways to participate in the U.S. medical system. In 2025, more than $42 billion allocated in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is expected to begin flowing to states as part of a national “Internet for All” initiative launched by the Biden administration.

Reps Randy Feenstra (R-IA) and Chris Pappas (D-NH) introduced the Audio-Only Telehealth Access Act, which would make Medicare’s coverage of audio-only telehealth services permanent. The current waiver—which is set to expire on March 31, 2025—allows the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to reimburse healthcare providers for patient evaluation, patient management, and behavioral health services over the phone.

We’re creeping closer to the one-year mark since the federal government axed the Affordable Connectivity Program due to lack of funding, which left over 23 million low-income households without affordable internet. But folks didn’t just lose the $30/month subsidy and a reliable broadband connection.