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service and brought to you by your television provider. >> this week on "the communicators," a discussion about a growing form of telecommunications and that is telemedicine. are dr. joseph kvedar along with our guest reporter kimberly leonard of business insider. how long has telemedicine been thend and what has been growth or use of it in the past couple months? >> it has been around since the early 1920's, there was a picture in one of the magazines, not popular science, it had a different name, it shows a family huddled around a radio having a visit with a doctor on the other side. the concept has been around for a while. the late 1960's is when it got going at it puttered around for the next several decades and a

couple months ago when we told everyone in the u.s. that they had to stay in their home and we as clinicians had to take care of them, it blossomed overnight. >> how can it be used today? >> it can be used in a number of ways. the best uses, mental health is the number one use and god knows it is a growing need, so that is wonderful. a lot of urgent care type things such as sore throats, your aches virtual-- ear aches, urgent care, then chronic illness has been, follow-up visits for patients with diseases like diabetes, heart failure, and the like are handily done. during the pandemic, we did everything this way. i'm a dermatologist, we did a lot of dermatology this way. i think where we are headed is

some kind of hybrid. confidente are pretty that we will continue to have telehealth as part of our care going forward and there are a lot of reasons for that, we can get into some of them later. most of those things -- what i is saying notn everything. the conversation you need to have is with your doctor and for us as clinicians to be able to think through the information we need to make either a diagnosis or change of care plan and if we can do that without touching the patient, we can do it via telehealth. >> let's bring kimberly leonard of business insider into this conversation to explore some of those issues. much for being available for this interview. for those who are not that

familiar, my understanding is that the trump administration had to make a lot of changes to rules to allow telehealth to be used in more doctors offices. can you tell us what some of those changes were for those who might not be familiar? dr. kvedar: the other day, i testified in front of a senate panel and i was informed that there are 31 to be exact but i can only brush the highlights. the biggest one is that the federal government and both private payers came on board , other clinicians, the same amount of reimbursement for telehealth patients as they would if someone came in the office, that was a critical one. a second one was allowing us as clinicians to see our patients wherever they were. medicare viewed to limit it to or shortageral areas. that went away so i can be where i am now, my home, and you can be where you are and begin have a visit and that would count and

we could go for that. of regulatoryr relaxation was in the area of technology and hip up -- and hip aa, and it went away overnight. they could use zoom, google hangouts, skype to do these calls. you could use a telephone. thatuld talk about whether is a good idea but the third area was licensure and 39 out of 50 states have listened there licensure requirements -- loosened their licensure requirements. i am in the boston area. if you happen to come visit me, let's say you live in new hampshire, which is about a half north, a half hour drive and we wanted to do a follow-up while you were in your home, we could new that -- we cannot do

that before but now weekend because of these relaxations. those three areas are the highlights. kimberly: this week, president trump said that he thought a lot of the telemedicine changes that the administration had made might become permanent. fromard an administrator the centers of medicare and medicaid services say the same. if you were to look at the landscape, which are the most important factors that need to remain in a put pandemic america? dr. kvedar: thank you for asking. when i mentioned i testified in front of the senate, there was a strong bipartisan support for this. we are very hopeful. , to answer your question, number one is what we call the originating site concept. i should be able to care for you wherever you are, not just in a health profession shortage area or rural area. that is number one on our list. federally qualified health

centers and rural health centers should be able to be reimbursed for providing these services, that was not the case before. and that the secretary of health and human services should be able to decide which services are reimbursable or not as part of their mandate. those are three areas that are important. there are others, but we are trying to be sustained. kimberly: it sounds as though some changes might be able to happen through rulemaking but others will probably require legislation. is that right? dr. kvedar: i believe so. the originating site rule that i mentioned was a statutory rule and that would have to be a new statute to change that. >> congress usually does not move this quickly. these things are happening pretty fast, aren't they? this is a bit of a

new world for me. i have not been rightly involved with government for but i was impressed when i was on the hill , i was in the same room testifying and foot them them -- in front of them, how committed the senators were to move as fast as possible. we have a term that we have coined call telemedicine cliff and what that means is this is i amn abstract notion, back seeing patients in the office at 40% of our previous volume and when we get a little be more cranked up, we will at 75% and be bones go higher than that. in order for us to meet the demand, we have to have telehealth embedded in our workflows and if we can't do that and a public health emergency goes away and there is no way to fix some of these regulatory restrictions, we will

be in trouble and our patients will be in more trouble. host: as a dermatologist, how do you diagnose? it, itdar: the way we do turns out -- this is research that i did 30 years ago -- your smartphone camera is adequate at taking good quality images. when we do this, we have our patients submit those images over the portal, which is myure, and they wind up in electronic records, then we can do a video call or phone call to review the images. for dermatology, a single lesion or rash, this is a great thing. a lot of my patients, they have had -- they need a skin check, that has to be done in the office. that is why this idea of a hybrid environment is the way we are going with this and it is critical that we are able to do

both. my understanding is -- this is from talking to hospital ceos and doctors -- the amount of care they have offered through telemedicine has increased so drastically in the past few months and for a lot of hospitals, it is something they wanted to do for a long time and have planned to roll out in the next two years and instead ended up doing it in two months. what percentage would you say of doctors visits are happening over telehealth and what are some of the biggest lessons that have come out of this? anything unexpected with the volume we have seen of telemedicine business? dr. kvedar: thank you for that. say, i am notll always proud to be in my profession. sometimes we mishandle things, but this is one where i am proud because doctors who were previously skeptical or thought

of this as a carry city or i'm too busy, i can't get involved, everyone jumped in and we have not had a bad patient outcome. alwaysse, patients have loved this, patients are -- when you can give patients what i call a medical triad of access, quality, inconvenience, everyone is happy. everyone knows it. is the biggest surprise, that it went so well. boston, we did 1600 virtual encounters in february and we are now up to 60,000 a week. -- 16,000 a week. talk to, other delivery systems, other health care providers are experiencing similar growth. you ask about how we are going

to settle out. we went from only seeing people in the office, to only seeing people virtually, essentially. except for emergencies. we know that that is not right either. between 30% and 50% of their activities will be virtual going forward. we will see how that turns out. some people have said 70%. i think that is a little aggressive, but between 30% and 50 did -- and 50%, and it does depend on your specialty. ophthalmologists can do little this way, you have to go to the office because of all the gadgets that they need. kimberly: one thing i'm curious about is for people who might be uncomfortable using the technology, maybe because they are not used to it or they might live in a part of the country weather is not good high-speed internet. how do you get around those obstacles to make sure that this can be something that patients can use or try or have that as

an option? dr. kvedar: thank you for that. surprise from this, and there have been a few, but one was the health plans and i government started paying us for telephone interactions with patients. up until the pandemic, that was never done. it always felt like they would say, if you call your patient after a visit, it is bundled in with a fee for the visit. now that is not the case. the reason i bring that up is for our patients that are in areas where they don't have broadband or for those patients that can't afford a tablet or smartphone, the telephone works. there has been research to show that a lot can be done. not everything, there are things that we miss if we don't have good video, but there is a lot that can be done. in my case, if you send me a few

images, i am comfortable calling you to talk about the results in begin formulate a care plan well on the telephone. telephone is an anchor point to solving the problem. -- this is meit speaking as an ata official -- we would love it if there was more broadband, if the government put a stimulus funds into creating more broadband penetration. that would be great for everyone, not just for health care. so broadband would be great. telephone visits are good. finally, one of the things we all own is making these interactions more patient-friendly. some of the software is hard. some people have trouble downloading an app, etc. we have to make it easy. that hasone platform the workflow that you send the patient a text message when you are ready for the visit, they click on the text and open the

video and they are chatting with you. we have to find ways to make it easy. host: at the beginning of this discussion, you mentioned that hipaa has gone out the window. could you expand on that a little? dr. kvedar: well, yeah. i did not actually need it that way. for the pandemic, the federal government relaxed the requirements that your video platforms had to be hipaa compliant so we could use any number of things and doctors did not have to -- before, to get something in, you had to hire an i.t. consultant and they made it difficult for people. great thing because we care about patient privacy and we take that seriously but if you are in a practice with two or three doctors and have to go through all of that, before, it was an excuse not to get involved. so the federal government was trying to let people overcome

that in a time when the only way we could provide care to you was to do this by telehealth. as we see the pandemic start to wane and we get back to some level of in person care, i think we will probably see that they will reinstate hipaa and i think that is a good thing. for vendors to supply us with videoconferencing and other types of patient engagement technologies, they should be willing to hold door information as a patient secure, that should be part of their bargain and they should be able to do that and if they can't, we probably should not be using the technology. kimberly: how can patients be confident that their health information, when done under video or over the phone, can be confidential? i think of instances where a physician might take a call from a patient when they are in a the information,

if it gets hacked somehow as a patient is having a conversation, how can you make sure that patients know that their information is secure and want to be late for everyone to see? ked for everyone to see? dr. kvedar: everyone is concerned about that and we are certainly at ata. even though we allowed these paa complianti platforms, most are secure. skype is secure, whatsapp is secure, many of them are secure. -- thisthe likelihood is important for patients, people watching this -- the likelihood that you would get your information compromised during a video call is low. it is very small. could it happen? yes. it is very unlikely.

that is one thing. and as we move forward, we will get back to a state of normalcy where we are to many that those technologies are secure before we use them, so we are headed in that direction, i'm sure. with regards to your question clinician and making sure that the clinician is in a private place, we are training people as fast as we can. one of the other activities i'm involved with is the association of american medical colleges training competencies for medical students so we can teach them a number of things about being a good telehealth provider and one of them is keeping your video chat private from the point of view of where you have it. we are getting that out as fast as we can. too many people who are flesh enough to -- who

are foolish enough to take it in a public place. host: are you getting resistance from physicians at all? dr. kvedar: maybe a little. i don't know if it is surprising or not. sort of a public health emergency like this and people's true stripes come out. everyone really jumped in with both feet, use whatever analogy you like, and participated. very little resistance. honestly, if you were to ask me in january and said, here is the scenario, i would have been -- i would have said there would have been more, but there is not because people want to take care of our patients because that is our calling. that is a good thing. again, there are some specialties where they need to do a procedure, they need to use equipment and they can't do this, so for them, that is not resistance, that is just quality of care. pandemic, should

telehealth visits be paid the same amount as a brick and mortar, in person visit? is that something you are advocating for? dr. kvedar: it is a complicated answer. nuanced,ighly actually. i'm going to try to break it down without sounding too nerdy. innician compensation comes three buckets. complexity of thinking, time spent with a patient, and practice expense. that the complex the of thinking and time spent is what it is no matter what vehicle we are using to care for you and should always be compensated the same way. --is possible -- and this is proven, but we will find that the practice expense

might be less and there may be a way to differentiate payments. ata policy isfic is for the federal government, we believe that these things should be compensated for at apr ity. -- parity. health plans will want to negotiate, as they always do, and we do not feel like it is our place to get in the rayovac. kimberly: we have heard from different health insurers when telehealth became more prominent , a lot of them said they would provide telehealth and no co-pay to patients. i have heard from patients who have gotten these surprise medical bills, they understood them to be included in their benefits but ended up with that surprise bill. how do you prevent something like that from happening and make sure that patients know what exactly their benefits are supposed to cover? dr. kvedar: we would all probably benefit from more trans

parity -- transparency in our industry. it is difficult sometimes to communicate the nuances of their plans and various coverage determinations to plan members. i would say that during this , i'm not really making excuse for anyone but we have thrown a lot at our health plan colleagues, we have thrown a lot at them and said, please pay for all of this. they are doing it as best they can. it is a long-winded way of saying cut them a break. member has the opportunity to go back and question any of that. we all do. but it has been a tough time for everyone and i think they are weeding through it in a careful way. some of those things may have slipped through the cracks. kimberly: you think it is more

about speed bumps them -- dr. kvedar: i do. this is another thing i would not have predicted but i have talked to a lot of health plans, not universally, but a lot of the ones are on board with continuing this. there is a belief -- it is only a belief -- i should not say that because there is some data to support it, but there is a belief that if we can people -- if we can keep people healthy, we can lower costs by keeping them out of the emergency room. we will actually say premium dollars. dr. kvedar is a practicing dermatologist. kindley leonard covers health for business insider. dr. kvedar, is there a chance that these sessions could start to be reported, thus increasing the privacy concerns?

well, now, as we are currently doing this and as we alluded to earlier, there are people using every kind of platform and some of those allow you to press the record button for sure. we advise clinicians never to do that. it does not make any sense. aress, perhaps, you recording part of a neurology exam for the record or something like that. patients will have the option during that as well. i don't think that should be part of our future but right now, it could happen. what if a patient wants that recording to be able to listen back and say -- particularly during maybe a visit with a psychologist, they want to listen back and try to embed it in their brains and hear the advice they received, is that permitted if the patient wants that information and wants to record it? dr. kvedar: i believe it is. i would have to double check but

i believe that is permitted. i'm not sure if that is best practice going forward, but i believe it is ok. host: have there been liability concerns with this? dr. kvedar: thanks for asking. there always has been. littlere has been very case log, almost none. malpractice carriers, even before the pandemic, recovering physicians from a malpractice perspective. like any other malpractice conversation or any other negligent conversation, common sense is important and i sat at another point in this interview that doctors need to decide what they need to make a decision and if they can get that information. if they can't, they should not make the decision. if you have to come into a brick-and-mortar facility to get something done, that is the best

way to get your care. we have to be thoughtful and we can't be sloppy, and we are getting to a point quickly where we no longer have to say the only way you can get care is by this, and it will even out and people will start to say, i would rather you come in for x, but it is ok that we do y by telemedicine. as we do more and more of that, the liability concerns will ease. advance or change telemedicine? >> 5g will be amazing. i was underwhelmed by 4g, so i am a bit of a skeptic, but if it works as advertised, it should be an amazing thing. how many of us, and i am guessing people watching, most of you have probably been on

failed zoom calls during this crisis. bandwidth is restricted, and we found out just how restricted it things one of the with 5g is it will be more elastic. not only faster, but more available. if we are going to do more and more video-based communications, not just in health care, but people in business, then we need that bandwidth to be able to get it all done. >> how do we prevent cases of fraud and abuse of the technology? i was thinking it would be fairly easy for some physicians to bill for things they did not conduct. does there need to be new legislation or guardrails passe d by the trump administration?

we are committed to a world where there is minimal fraud. we will advocate for that. if that background, i would say two things. one is another principle i have lived by for almost 30 years of doing this is that we should not hold telemedicine to a higher standard than in person care. we know that there unfortunately is plenty of fraud in the offices around. if fraud means people randomly sending bills for things they did not do, there is no difference here except we may be better off, because as you know, software is time stamped and date stamped when you are having a conversation with a patient. we can track whether people are actually having those video calls as part of our system.

we will be sure we are not estimating any fraud in that regard. to recordat allow us not necessarily the content, but to record that the visit happened. you could envision a future where this type of care shows us , or results in less fraud than in person care, because you can't always document that someone came to the office. >> unfortunately we are out of time. joseph kvedar is president of american telemedicine association. kimberly covers health care for business insider. thank you for being on the program. you are watching c-span, your unfiltered view of government, created by america's cable television company as a public service, and brought to you today by your television provider. obama tweeted a

statement congratulating joe biden and kamala harris on their victory. the former president said, "the election results at every level show that the country remains deeply and bitterly divided. it will be up to not just joe and kamala, but for each of us to lower the temperature and find some common ground. live look at the chase center in wilmington, delaware, where president-elect biden and vice president-elect harris will hold an event tonight, their first since the presidential race was called earlier today. watch live coverage starting at 8:00 eastern on c-span, online at c-span.org, or listen live on the c-span radio app.

sunday on "q&a," los angeles times supreme court reporter 2000 bushe on the versus gore case, and how the case compares to the legal challenges filed by the trump campaign. >> it was a once in a generation case where, from the beginning, there were five members of the court, five republicans who sort of took the view of the bush all theich was, gee, votes are counted in florida and governor bush has won. presidente position trump is in sort of now, the position of al gore. once the votes have been casted and counted and you lost, it is very hard to go to court and persuade a court to essentially stepie