Lacktman Comments on Effects of Video Telehealth Requirements

Partner Nate Lacktman was quoted in an mHealth Intelligence article, “Do Video Telehealth Requirements Curtail Access in Rural States?” about a study showing that states that mandate video-based telehealth may be limiting access to care for underserved populations who don’t have the broadband capacity to use video.

Lacktman, chair of the firm’s national Telemedicine & Digital Health Industry Team, said the study’s hypothesis is intriguing because it connects one of the early promises of virtual care (reaching patients in rural, medically-underserved areas) to the reality of increasing demands on internet bandwidth due to streaming media and other online services. “Laws that per se mandate the use of audio-video telemedicine fail to account for such differences in resources and economic disparity, which can further disenfranchise the very patients in underserved areas telemedicine was intended to help,” he said.