Iowa Includes PAs, Speech-Language Pathologists, Audiologists in Telehealth Rules

Healthcare regulators in Iowa have released new guidelines that allow physician assistants, speech-language pathologists and audiologists to use telehealth.

The state’s Board of Physician Assistants and Board of Speech Pathology and Audiology unveiled the new regulations last month, according to JD Supra, following a trend that has seen state governments make permanent some emergency measures enacted during the pandemic to expand telehealth access. The move is designed to allow more care providers to use connected health channels and to help patients access needed care services outside the hospital or doctor’s office.

For physician assistants, the new rules allow them to use a synchronous telehealth platform to interview a patient and obtain relevant medical history prior to treatment and to fulfill the requirements for the doctor-patient relationship. The rule prohibits the use of asynchronous (store-and-forward) telehealth platforms, such as an online questionnaire, for these purposes.

The guidelines ensure that physician assistants meet the standards of care that physicians and other care providers now using telehealth must meet, including ensuring that the platform follows Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requirements and that they obtain consent from the patient ahead of using telehealth.

For speech-language pathologists and audiologists, meanwhile, a new chapter has been added to the state’s Administrative Code that allows them to use HIPAA-compliant telehealth platforms to connect with patients, as long as the patients agree to using telehealth beforehand and the encounters are properly documented. They’re also directed to use synchronous platforms that allow “real-time, two-way communications,” rather than asynchronous platforms.

Telehealth advocates have long lobbied to expand the ranks of healthcare providers able to use the technology to specialists and certain care providers, such as therapists, who are few in number and aren’t easily accessible for patients, especially in remote and rural parts of the country. The inclusion of physician assistants, meanwhile, is designed to help health systems expand their telehealth platforms by giving PAs the freedom to do some of the things that have limited to physicians in the past.