Telehealth and Telemedicine are Helping New York Handle Mental health Crisis
The hard reality of COVID-19 is that it’s ravaging more than just bodies; it’s creating a mental health crisis. Mental health patients and doctors are adapting to quarantine and social distancing rules by acclimatizing with telehealth.
The COVID-19 has become the proverbial perfect storm of stressors. The outcome of the ravaging pandemic has been a conglomeration of everything negative that you can imagine. This includes everything from job loss, economic instability, and food insecurity to the uncertainty of when (or even if) life will return to normal. Social distancing that’s promoted as the key to protecting physical health is leading to the isolation that’s taking a toll on mental health.
Suspended the Bureaucratic Rules
Patients who were already receiving treatment for mental health issues can no longer visit their doctors’ thanks to the epidemic that has changed things. By necessity, consultation through telephone and video conferencing is taking the place of face-to-face in-person hospital visits. This was made possible due to emergency orders and the U.S. president’s recent executive order to make telehealth available beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. Governor Cuomo’s emergency orders enabled the state to reimburse healthcare providers for telehealth services and suspended the bureaucratic rules that made it impossible for doctors to offer the service in the first place.
Telehealth is a convenient tool for helping people facing numerous health challenges get better. Records indicate that the number of patients who failed to show up for appointments dropped from 33% to 15% between March and May. Healthcare providers opted to use telehealth for triage health issues instead of having patients travel for their appointments. The introduction of telemedicine has dramatically helped to reduce the expensive emergency room visits.
Extended the Emergency Orders
None of this would have been possible in February. Before the pandemic, we could only bill for telehealth at a fraction of the rate for in-person services. And outdated rules, such as a requirement that both the patient and the physician be physically located in a licensed facility, meant that only a fraction of patients could benefit from telehealth services.
New York governor has extended the emergency orders for a short term, and it’s now upon the legislature to take the necessary steps to make them permanent. The state Senator Peter Harckham and Assembly Members Linda Rosenthal and Aileen Gunther have already introduced legislation that would allow telehealth sessions to be reimbursed at the same rate as in-person visits. Should the legislature pass the bills and sign them into law, it will enable healthcare providers to serve better people living with mental issues besides meeting the mental health challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Old Barriers Falling away
There’s no doubt that COVID-19 has been devastating. However, it has created one positive impact – the fast growth of telehealth services and Telehealth App services. From the early crisis hotlines of the 1950s, we now have technology-based solutions like the Solve.Care and Red Kangaroo to handle medical issues at the touch of a button. Telehealth has now made it possible to offer mental health care services via telephone and video-conferencing.
The old barriers to telehealth, such as lack of consumer awareness or limited insurance reimbursement—are falling away in large part due to social distancing. Telehealth App providers, insurers and regulators are making it easier for people to receive professional mental health care help via phone, video conference, and even chat. A growing number of online provider platforms such as TalkSpace and BetterHelp have risen to the fore to help those with depression, anxiety, PTSD, and other conditions to get the care they need, remotely.