INFORMATION AND RESOURCES ON COVID-19

Telehealth Now Available by CMS for Medicare Patients

• Provide treatment to your patients outside of offices and/or healthcare facilities and be reimbursed
• Use publicly available technology such as Facetime or Skype with the new HIPPA governance waiving the need for HIPAA secured technology
• New CPT and HCPCS codes have been established for telehealth services
• More information on the telehealth expansion for Medicare can be found here.
• Click on the link for the American Rheumatology Network telehealth summary and codes

CMS 1135 Waivers to Ease Administrative Burden on Providers for Medicaid Patients

• Treat Medicaid patients with greater freedom and less paperwork
• For example, states can decide to reimburse for telehealth services, remove the need for FFS prior authorizations, reimburse physicians for services provided out of state and more 
• Options vary from state to state. More information on the Section 1135 Waivers can be found here

Trials Underway to Evaluate Treatment and Prevention of COVID-19

• On March 16, 2020 the combined forces of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and Moderna, already working on a vaccine for MERS, announced new Phase I studies for a vaccine targeting COVID-19 with mRNA-1273
• Almost simultaneously several additional treatment options went into clinical trials globally; including Phase 2/3 studies using tocilizumab and sarilumab, by Genentech and Regeneron/Sanofi, respectively, to treat cytokine release syndrome (CRS) and pneumonia in COVID-19 patients
• Genentech launched a website to provide U.S. Healthcare Providers (HCPs) with up-to-date information about Actemra (tocilizumab) and Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), which can be found here

“We have received a surge of questions from HCPs across the globe regarding the use of Actemra for COVID-19, therefore the intent of this website is to make such information available to enable physicians to make informed individual treatment decisions”

– Genentech

• The first successful clinical trial with positive interim results on a treatment for COVID-19 were made public April 27th with interim results demonstrating that patients treated with remdesivir had a 31% faster time to recovery than those on placebo (P<0.001)
• The remdesivir trial, the Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial, was sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a part of the National Institute of Health
• Other antivirals, alone or in combination with other drugs, are also under investigation
• A full listing on clinicaltrials.gov of all trials for COVID-19 can be found here

AWIR Letter to Insurers, Vendors, and Manufacturers Advocating for Provider Relief

Use this letter to advocate for yourself and the medical community to allow everyone to focus on patient care and remove administrative hurdles. The letter can be viewed, edited, and downloaded by clicking on the link.