The American Hospital Association didn’t respond to requests for comment about the rationale for facility fees for telehealth care.Īs the pandemic began overwhelming the health system last year, hospitals essentially closed their doors to most non-covid patients.
DO TELEHEALTH VISITS HAVE COPAYS SOFTWARE
“It offsets the cost of the software we use to facilitate the telehealth visits, and we do still have to keep the lights on,” he said, noting that the providers doing telehealth visits are on hospital sites that incur heat and power and maintenance charges. Under the new law, he said, the health system hasn’t charged any telehealth patients a facility fee.īut such fees are justified, McCabe said. He speculated that her son’s appointment might have been coded incorrectly. Pat McCabe, senior vice president of finance at Yale New Haven Health System, said he can’t explain why Harrison received a notice that she’d be charged a facility fee for a telehealth visit. The prohibition on facility fees sunsets at the end of June 2023. In Connecticut, hospitals are prohibited from charging facility fees for telehealth visits.Ĭonnecticut imposed what may be the only state ban on telehealth facility fees as part of a broader law passed in May that was intended to help residents access telehealth during the pandemic. Doolittle reached out to her after seeing her tweet to offer his office’s assistance. Medicare has allowed hospitals to assess a small fee for certain beneficiaries who get telehealth care at home during the ongoing national public health emergency, and people in private health plans may also be charged for them. “It rankles, and it should.”įacility fees for video appointments remain rare, health finance experts say, even as the use of telehealth has soared during the covid pandemic. “The charges seem crazy,” said Ted Doolittle, who heads up Connecticut’s Office of the Healthcare Advocate, which provides help to consumers with health coverage issues. Patients seeing the same doctor for the same care as at earlier visits are now on the hook for the extra fee - because of a change in ownership.Ĭharging a facility fee for a video visit where the patient logs in from their living room is even more of a head-scratcher. Over the past several years, hospitals have been on a buying binge, snapping up physician practices that often then begin charging the fees, too. Hospitals say the fees, which can add hundreds of dollars or even more than $1,000 to a patient’s bill, are necessary to cover the high cost of keeping a hospital open and ready to provide care 24/7.īut it’s not only hospital visits that result in facility fees.
Hospital facility fees have long come under criticism from patients and consumer advocates.
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Subscribe to KFF Health News' free Weekly Edition. “It’s just one of many examples of how this is a very difficult system to use,” Harrison said, referring to the intricacies of U.S. Since the doctor would be on hospital property, the hospital would charge a facility fee of between $50 and $350, depending on her insurance coverage. She called the billing office the next morning and was told the facility fee is based on where the doctor is located. Harrison, 40, who works in nonprofit communications, posted on Twitter about the unwelcome fee, including an image of Marge Simpson of TV’s The Simpsons with a disgusted look on her face, captioned “GROANS.”
The second would be for a hospital facility fee, even though she and her son would be at home in Cheshire, Connecticut, and never set foot in any hospital-affiliated building. It can be republished for free.ĭays before the appointment, she got a notice from the hospital informing her that she would receive two bills for the visit.
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