The Arizona Telemedicine Program Blog

The overwhelmingly positive response to our recent webinar, Navigating Telehealth Legislative and Policy Changes Beyond the Public Health Emergency, resulted in many questions left in chat we were unable to address. Below, I present those questions, with answers I hope get to the heart of current areas we recognize as important areas for the future of virtual care in Arizona, the Southwest and throughout the country.

Looking back at Alison Hughes’ career, it’s hard not to be in awe over the roads she’s traveled with civil rights and social justice leading almost every turn that eventually led her to Tucson in 1970.

“It’s a life,” Hughes said, shrugging off the compliment with a smile in her light Scottish accent.

That life, however, took Hughes from her native Scotland to study in the United States at age 19. In the early ’60s, she worked at the United States Commission on Civil Rights, and participated in the 1963 Civil Rights March in D.C. led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

To almost anyone passing by the latest star at Benson Hospital, the room looks like a typical workout spot with a treadmill, an exercise bike, and a set of free weights, but to 12 patients living near this rural community hospital, it represents saving time and critical steps needed to making their cardiac health a priority.

During a recent tour, Velma Cooper, Director of Nursing, excitedly pointed out construction taking place—a soon-to-be new entrance, check-in area, administrative offices and more, which will hopefully be done by the end of March. Past the hospital’s new radiology department and further past the ER, sits the new cardiac telemedicine rehabilitation room.

As Dr. Eladio Pereira recalls the challenges he and other medical professionals experienced during Covid, an easy broad smile spreads across his face thinking about his friend the late Dr. Ron Weinstein and the crew at the Arizona Telemedicine Program.

Pereira, chief medical officer at the Mariposa Community Health Center that serves the U.S.-Mexico border communities of Santa Cruz County in Southern Arizona, said Mariposa’s Nogales clinic was one of ATP’s first telemedicine projects outside Tucson in 1997.

“We were learning together. They wanted us to participate and were extremely generous with us,” Pereira said.

Five Key Telehealth Takeaways from the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023  

On Thursday, December 29, President Biden signed into law H.R. 2716, the Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA) for Fiscal Year 2023. This legislation provides more than $1.7 trillion to fund various aspects of the federal government, including a 2-year extension of the major telehealth waivers that were initiated during the federal public health emergency (PHE). 

The full text of the legislation, is available here. The most pertinent section of the new law that relates to telehealth is under: