Giving Compass' Take:

• Shirley Svorny explains how legal barriers to telemedicine stymie the proliferation of high-quality care and how these barriers can be removed. 

• What are the risks of reducing the barriers to telemedicine? How can the need for regulation be balanced with the need for care? 

• Learn about the pros and cons of online diagnosis tools. 

One of the most promising areas of medical innovation is the expansion of telemedicine, where medical professionals treat patients across great distances using electronic communications. Telemedicine enables patients to seek care from providers whom they would otherwise need to travel to see, including top specialists who may be located thousands of miles away, and it offers life-saving assistance in emergencies.

Telemedicine can be as simple as a video or telephone consultation with a physician or nurse, or as sophisticated as using “robots” — roving computers with cameras, microphones, and speakers — in emergency departments and intensive-care units to offer patients remote access to specialists in cardiology, mental health, neonatology, neurology, pediatrics, and other areas of medicine.

Telemedicine can enhance the productivity of physicians and even patients, such as when workers avoid lost work time by substituting convenient, on-demand video interactions with a physician for a routine office visit. While telemedicine is growing in use and acceptance, state licensing laws keep it from reaching its full potential.

The main barrier to telemedicine is the requirement that physicians obtain licenses from each and every state in which their current or potential patients are, or may be, located.

Read the source article on legal barriers to telemedicine by Shirley Svorny at Cato Institute.