When it comes to the practice of telehealth or telemedicine,
there are numerous legal obstacles, and the main one among those is licensure.
Healthcare providers, which include physicians or doctors,
are licensed by the states. generally, their practice is often governed by the
state where that are practicing physically (i.e. their ‘home state’) as well as
the state where the patient is located (i.e. the ‘remote state’). For instance,
if a California physician who specializes in cancer wants to offer consultation
to a patient or patients in New York, then the physician needs to be licenses
in California as well as in New York, both, as per healthcare law Las Vegas.
Otherwise, New York city could find the physician who has California license
guilty of practicing medicine in NY without NY license.
There are some states that have attempted to find a solution
to this problem by forming a limited telehealth license for which the out-of
state physicians and healthcare providers could apply. However, the problem is
that this solution isn’t available in all the states.
In the other states, licensing law and healthcare compliance program allows the out-of state doctors to offer consultation to an in-state
doctor regarding a given patient. Here, it is important to note that it isn’t
the same thing as allowing an out-of state physician to provide their medical
services to the in-state-patient remotely. Certain states also have reciprocity
for the health care practitioners like nurses but not the same for physicians.
Because there isn’t a national physician licensing, physicians are placed in
potential legal perils and issues when they offer services to out-of state
patients.