Momentum builds to reimburse all telestroke services

Once again perpetuating the failure that is tPA, which only fully works to reverse the stroke 12% of the time. When the hell are the stroke leaders going to acknowledge reality and discuss all the failures in stroke? I figure that will never occur unless our stroke associations management and board of directors are replaced by innovative stroke survivors.
http://www.mhealthnews.com/news/momentum-builds-reimburse-all-telestroke-services
Lawmakers and healthcare leaders are pushing legislation that would enable Medicare to reimburse more providers for telestroke services.
A House bill, the "Furthering Access to Stroke Telemedicine (FAST) Act (H.R. 2799)," would change what its sponsors call an "outdated provision of law" and expand the locations where stroke sufferers could receive telestroke treatment. Current Medicare rules restrict such services to federally designated rural hospitals.
A companion bill in the Senate, S.1465, was introduced in May by Sen. Mark S. Kirk, R-Ill., himself a stroke survivor.

Both bills call for a new clause in the Social Security Act that would define the "originating site" for stroke telehealth services as "any site at which the eligible telehealth individual is located at the time the service is furnished via a telecommunications system, regardless of where the site is located." That would add urban and suburban hospitals to the list of available sites.
"Telestroke has proven to be very effective in increasing the speed with which patients get treatment by a stroke neurologist and also the number of patients who get tPA in both rural and urban areas," Reps. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, and Morgan Griffith, R-Va., said in a blog published recently in The Hill.
Also supporting the bill are the American Heart Association and the American Stroke Association, both of which say the FAST Act could save 22,000 Medicare beneficiaries each year by delivering faster healthcare in the crucial time period following a stroke – the nation's fifth leading killer, a leading cause of disability and the second leading cause of dementia. Both organizations also point to a November 2014 study that indicates telemedicine intervention in stroke cases could save $1.2 billion over 10 years, including disability and rehabilitation care costs.
According to a flyer sponsored by the two organizations as well as the American Telemedicine Association, National Stroke Association and American Academy of Neurology, the clot-busting drug tPA is available to treat the most common type of stroke, but only 3 percent to 5 percent of stroke sufferers get it in time – within the first three to four hours – to prevent brain damage.
In their blog, Beatty and Griffith say 94 percent of stroke patients live in urban or suburban areas, where Medicare doesn't cover telestroke services, yet they face the same barriers to speedy care as those in rural areas. Added to that burden is the current 11 percent shortfall of neurologists, they said.
"We believe that all Medicare beneficiaries deserve access to fast, high quality stroke treatment, regardless of where they live," the lawmakers said.
Telemedicine advocates, and the ATA in particular, have long led the charge to increase reimbursement for all telemedicine services by ditching the requirement that originating sites by located in so-called rural areas – which themselves have been redefined more than once.