Hospitals

States and insurers resurrect barriers to telehealth, straining patients As emergency provisions end, patients are scrambling — in some cases, driving across state lines — to keep their telehealth appointments. Katie Palmer STAT

Telemedicine is here to stay. But its free-for-all era may be coming to an end.

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in most parts of the country, Americans have reason to cheer, with more than half of those over 12 fully vaccinated, state after state lifting all emergency restrictions and caseloads decreasing by double-digits week over week. Families are traveling again, diners are flocking to restaurants and baseball is back as America’s seasonal pastime.

But the summer is turning out to be fairly joyless in places like CoxHealth Medical Center in Springfield, Mo., where nurses, doctors and respiratory therapists have been grappling with a resurgence in coronavirus cases that forced the hospital to reopen the 80-bed Covid unit it had shuttered in May.