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Around the Corner: The Future Of Telehealth After COVID-19

by Jennifer S. Geetter, Marshall E. Jackson, Jr. and Lisa Mazur | Jun 26, 2020 | Telehealth

Prior to the pandemic, health providers and stakeholders were quickly moving to develop and expand existing telehealth programs. Now we are seeing an adoption of telehealth solutions that far surpasses all of the activity we saw in the past five years combined.

Joined by leaders from BDO, Babylon Health, Crossover Health and the Illinois Bone & Joint Institute, we discussed what the future of digital provider/patient engagement may look like after COVID-19 and the legal factors that influence implementation. Telehealth is the new normal and there is no turning back.

Bar graph with poll results.

PROGRAM INSIGHTS

There is now recognition that telehealth can, in fact, replace in-person visits in many situations. Patients and healthcare providers have quickly turned to telehealth to provide care for existing and new healthcare conditions during the pandemic. This increase in use has provided additional data demonstrating the value of telehealth. In addition to telehealth visits, patients are looking to patient care navigators and wellness advisors for basic healthcare information that can empower them to manage their healthcare needs before seeking treatment from a licensed healthcare professional.
The regulation of telehealth on a state-by-state basis is an ongoing hindrance to telehealth providers in the United States. While the state waivers on professional licensure and care delivery during the COVID-19 public health emergency have temporarily lowered some of these barriers, these waivers have or will soon expire in many states, once again leaving telehealth providers with the burden of developing complex compliance strategies that differ from state to state.
For telehealth to achieve its full potential, it needs to be freed from the constraints that apply to in-person episodic care. In doing so, remote monitoring can meaningfully engage patients in real time to actively manage care on an ongoing basis, without interruptions or the need for a pre-scheduled visit.
The COVID-19 pandemic is digital health adrenaline – forcing people rapidly and without warning to pivot to telehealth. But when technology works well and effectively, demand will persist well beyond the catalyzing event. If patients receive superior quality care through digital technologies and superior convenience, this improved experience will force the traditional healthcare delivery process to continue its changed approach.
The healthcare transactional business model is a challenge that holds back widespread adoption of telehealth. Now that lawmakers have data that demonstrates the value of telehealth, reimbursement codes for different delivery modalities will need to be reevaluated. This reevaluation will future catalyze greater adoption of telehealth by providers as payments will align more appropriately with the services delivered.

For a deeper dive into these topics, please listen to our webinar recording, available here.

Public Backlash Calls Use of Facial Recognition Systems into Question

by McDermott Will & Emery | Jun 25, 2020 | Big Data, Consumer Protection, Data Privacy, Workplace Privacy

In recent weeks and months, legal and technical issues related to use of facial recognition systems in the United States have received national attention, including concerns that the technology lacks accuracy in identifying non-white individuals and that its widespread use by police departments may play a role in racially discriminatory policing. Privacy considerations will play a key role in the ongoing debate over the future of facial recognition technology.

Facial recognition systems (FRS) are automated or semi-automated technologies that analyze an individual’s features by extracting facial patterns from video or still images. FRS use attributes or features of an individual’s face to create data that can be used for the unique personal identification of a specific individual. FRS use has grown exponentially in recent years. In addition to widespread adoption by law enforcement agencies, FRS are also frequently used in retail, banking and security sectors, such as airport screening. Particularly in recent weeks and months, legal and technical issues associated with FRS have come to the forefront, including concerns that the technology lacks accuracy in identifying non-white individuals and that its widespread use by police departments may play a role in racially discriminatory policing.

In response to the global Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, public health agencies and private sector companies have considered ways that FRS might be used in conjunction with proximity and geolocation tracking data to control the disease’s spread. Some foreign governments have implemented extensive biometric and behavioral monitoring to track and contain the spread of the virus, and have used FRS to identify persons who have been in contact with COVID-19-positive individuals and to enforce quarantine or stay-at-home orders. By contrast, use of FRS in the United States already faced opposition because of pre-COVID-19 data privacy concerns, and has encountered increased backlash after the civil rights protests of the past month due to concerns over the technology’s accuracy and accompanying questions regarding its use by law enforcement agencies.

Accuracy Concerns

There are currently no industry standards for the development of FRS, and as a result, FRS algorithms differ significantly in accuracy. A December 2019 National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) study, the third in a series conducted through its Face Recognition Vendor Test program, evaluated the effects of factors such as race and sex on facial recognition software. The study analyzed 189 facial recognition algorithms from 99 developers, using collections of photographs with approximately 18 million images of eight million people pulled from databases provided by the US Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The study found disproportionately higher false positive rates for African American, Asian and Native American faces for one-to-one matching, and higher rates of false positives for African American females for one-to-many matching. The effect of the high rate of false positives for African American females put this group at the greatest risk of misidentification. While law enforcement is encouraged to adopt a high threshold recognition percentage—often 99%—for the use of FRS, in reality police departments exercise [...]

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COVID-19 Causing a Surge in E-Commerce—Is Your Website Accessible?

by McDermott Will & Emery | Jun 10, 2020 | Consumer Protection, Ecommerce, Mobile Apps

Stay-at-home orders and business closures during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic have led to a sharp increase in online shopping. While e-commerce has helped businesses stay afloat during this challenging economic time, there has also been a spike in litigation alleging that certain websites are not accessible to individuals with disabilities. In an article for Bloomberg Law, Jeremy White, Matthew Cin and Brian Long review the legal landscape governing accessibility of websites – including specific rules that apply to the healthcare industry, and explore best practices for companies to mitigate their risk of facing a website accessibility lawsuit.

Click here to read the full article.