California residents need only say "yes" once to access telehealth, thanks to a new law.
AB 809, signed into law this week by Gov. Jerry Brown, enables patients in that state to provide verbal or written consent to being treated through telehealth at an initial meeting with their provider. The bill eliminates two key requirements that many had seen as hindering the expansion of telehealth services: that patients provide consent every time they meet with a doctor, and that the consent be documented only at the originating site.
"This bill took the two-year route in the legislature and I think we produced something to be proud of," California State Assemblyman Daniel Logue, who introduced the original bill in 2011, said in a press release. "We worked with multiple stakeholders on this bill and those seeking treatment through telehealth will be better off for it. Telehealth benefits everyone but those who benefit most are in rural areas like my district. When the nearest specialist is hundreds of miles away, telehealth becomes about more than convenience; it is about saving lives."
In 2011, state legislators passed Logue's bill, AB 415, the Telehealth Advancement Act of 2011, which expanded telehealth access throughout the state and increased the number of specialties that could use the technology and qualify for reimbursements. That bill replaced all references to "telemedicine" in state statutes with "telehealth," which lawmakers said was broader and more appropriate, and ended the requirement that doctors state specifically why a patient couldn't attend a face-to-face meeting before agreeing to use telehealth.
Since then, lawmakers had been working to adopt streamlined telehealth credentialing guidelines adopted by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and merge them with the access guidelines contained in AB 109.
California's efforts to ease access to telehealth run counter to legislative efforts in some states. Among them are Georgia, which requires a face-to-face meeting with a doctor prior to the use of telehealth, and Tennessee, which is considering a similar measure. Legislators in both states say they want to improve the physician-patient relationship. The American Telemedicine Association opposes both measures, saying they contradict guidelines recently amended by the Federation of State Medical Boards.
