Medical mobile app companies are changing the face of healthcare. They include companies like CareSync that contacts your doctor to get your medical records and allows you to keep your complete medical history right on your mobile device. iHealth Labs connects users’ smartphones to medical devices like glucometers and blood pressure monitors, and AirStrip gives clinicians a tool to view their patients’ data from anywhere in the world for quicker and more efficient care.
Reports show that 60 percent of people are using mobile apps to help track their conditions and make better informed choices about their health. Apps have the potential to make a significant difference in the health and welfare of their users, as well as bring down the overall cost of healthcare through reductions in office visits and trips to the emergency room, lowered administrative costs as records become more portable, and decreasing the need for expensive treatments by helping patients identify medical issues early, to name a few. However, our healthcare payment structure hasn’t kept pace with technology. Today, there remains a major obstacle for further innovation in the medical mobile app economy – money.
A significant way to encourage continued innovation in medical mobile apps is to make their use reimbursable by Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance. Currently, medical practitioners are not paid for the time they spend using medical mobile apps in service of their patients. While there has been talk in Congress of making telehealth (and by extension mobile health apps) reimbursable, the current House bill 21st Century Cures removed the telehealth reimbursement section. There appears to be more support in the Senate where legislation is being drafted to dramatically expand telehealth reimbursement.
Apps can help improve patient outcomes and are being increasingly used by medical professionals to better serve their patients. Reimbursing medical practitioners for their use of medical mobile apps and the data they generate will break down some of the barriers to entry and incentivize companies to go further, build bigger, and pioneer new things in the medical mobile app economy. That means better apps for patients and medical practitioners, reduced healthcare costs like those associated with monitoring chronic illnesses, and more opportunities for app companies. Laws and regulations around electronic health records and medical apps can be intimidating for small app companies, so it is important that this industry receive the validation and support it needs by including it into the medical reimbursement system.
Until mobile apps become a recognized and reimbursable healthcare option, innovation will continue to be hampered. A lag in funding for mobile medical apps means lag in adoption, fewer healthy patients, and continued unnecessary high healthcare costs. In order to have the next generation of health apps, we need the next generation of medical reimbursement.
Image: Brandi Korte / license / no changes made