Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Legal Issues & Obstacles of Telemedicine


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.