States Address Diverse Issues Affecting Mental Health Care
Abstract
States Address Diverse Issues Affecting Mental Health CareRich Daly Virginia would join 11 states in requiring insurers to cover telemedicine, and insurers in Vermont whose policies cover lost tuition must now pay when students drop out of college due to mental illness. Several states have recently enacted laws or regulations that could affect people who have mental illness.• The Virginia legislature added a requirement that health care insurers in the state cover telemedicine services, which are increasingly used by psychiatrists to treat patients living in rural areas. The legislature's March approval of a telemedicine coverage requirement (SB 675) would make Virginia the 12th state to require health insurers to cover the use of a wide variety of remote treatments. Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) is expected to sign the measure, according to supporters. In addition to covering telemedicine services for mental health care, including “counseling,” the bill would require coverage of such services as use of university-based digital networks, remote cardiac monitoring, and home-care monitoring of patients with advanced diabetes. Mental health uses are “a very major part of where telemedicine is going,” said Jonathan Linkous, CEO of the American Telemedicine Association (ATA), in an interview with Psychiatric News.