The Status of Telemedicine Reimbursement: States’ Efforts to Incentivize Providers to Utilize Telehealth Technologies

A seventy-four-year-old woman is brought to an emergency room of a rural hospital with stroke-like symptoms. The hospital does not have a stroke neurologist on staff and the closest one is several miles away. Within minutes, a two-way audio-video robot is brought to the patient’s bedside and on the other end of the video a neurologist conducts a virtual consultation. He concludes that the patient suffered a stroke and instructs emergency room staff to administer appropriate medication to minimize brain damage. The patient in this case made a full recovery — yet had the hospital staff waited for the neurologist to arrive and examine her in person, the consequences could have been much more dire.¹