Telemedicine

What is Telemedicine?

Telemedicine is the clinical subset of telehealth — the delivery of medical care through real-time, interactive audio-video communication between a licensed clinician and a patient. While the terms telemedicine and telehealth are often used interchangeably in practice, telemedicine specifically excludes non-clinical services such as health education, administrative functions, and remote monitoring without a clinician encounter. The Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act imposes significant constraints on prescribing controlled substances via telemedicine, requiring an in-person evaluation before prescribing Schedule II–V substances absent a DEA-registered telemedicine platform waiver. State licensure requirements apply across state lines — a physician must generally hold a license in the state where the patient is located, creating multi-state licensure complexity for large telemedicine programs. The American Telemedicine Association (ATA) publishes clinical practice guidelines by specialty. As of 2024, 43 states have enacted some form of telemedicine payment parity law, though the scope and enforcement vary significantly.

Why It Matters for Healthcare Analytics

Parity law compliance and enforcement vary by state and payer, meaning reimbursement for identical telemedicine visits can differ dramatically across your payer mix. Monitoring telemedicine denial rates by payer, tracking reimbursement relative to in-person equivalents, and identifying which service lines drive the most telemedicine volume are foundational analytics for any practice with significant virtual care delivery.

How Vizier Tracks Telemedicine

Upload your billing export and ask "Which payers are denying our telemedicine E/M claims and at what rate?" — Vizier identifies denial patterns by payer, place of service, and modifier without requiring a data analyst to build a custom report.