Democrats to Draft Telehealth

A resident of Marlton, New Jersey, Sophia Eick attends the University of Delaware where she plans to get a degree in nursing. At the university, Sophia Eick shadowed the pediatric emergency care and the trauma team at Nemours Alfred I. duPont Hospital.

In August 2021, the Nemours duPont Pediatrics announced a collaboration with Democratic Senator Tom Carper and US Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester to draft legislation to expand telehealth options for Americans from low-income communities. Titled the Telehealth Improvement for Kids’ Essential Services (TIKES) Act, this legislation would also include children.

During the pandemic, telehealth visits increased with Nemours increasing their telehealth offerings to accommodate the nearly 2,400 percent increase in patients between February and April 2020. Furthermore, a survey the hospital conducted with another organization reported that approximately 64 percent of people said telehealth services were essential to the future of telehealth, and 90 percent reported that it facilitated parent involvement in their child’s healthcare compared with in-person care.

If enacted, the TIKES Act would establish guidelines for increasing access to telehealth for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, also known as CHIP, and Medicaid. It would also require GAO (General Accounting Office) to study the impact of telehealth on the Medicaid population. Another study would review coordination among federal agency telehealth policies to see if they are effective and look for expansion opportunities into early care and education settings.