Health Care Attorneys Analyze the Future of Telehealth

In a Health Affairs Blog article, health care partner David Peloquin (Boston) advocates that a system where states recognize medical licenses from other states would help the U.S. to confront future health emergencies and replace office medical visits with telehealth appointments.

The authors note that during the pandemic many physician visits that traditionally had occurred in person were readily converted to virtual encounters, without evident sacrifice of quality or problematic outcomes.

However, the US’s state-based system of medical licensure continues to restrict access, both to broad and permanent adoption of telemedicine and to the increased flexibility of medical practice, more generally. 

The article was co-authored by Barbara Bierer, MD, a hematologist/oncologist and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) who co-founded and is faculty director of the Multi-Regional Clinical Trials Center of BWH and Harvard.