California’s Telemedicine Restrictions Are Forcing Rare Disease Patients To Travel Out of State for Care
To receive treatment and consultations for her hemophilia A, a rare bleeding disorder, Shellye Horowitz will periodically travel from her home in rural northern California to a hemophilia clinic associated with the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) Hospital in Portland, Oregon.
California’s telemedicine regulations require that doctors who treat or consult with patients in California must also be licensed in California. Since the specialists Horowitz sees aren’t licensed in California, she’s frequently having to make the 14-hour round trip up to Portland for appointments that could have easily been done remotely.
“I have had so far three appointments at my hemophilia treatment center where when the time I was available to travel to Portland, they only had phone appointments available,” says Horowitz. “I’ve had to physically travel to Portland to sit in a hotel with worse internet than my home to have telehealth appointments.”
Telemedicine experienced a boom during COVID, when states waived restrictions on remote medical appointments via emergency orders as part of their social distancing regimes. Many have since passed permanent policy changes allowing out-of-state doctors to offer their services to patients.
But California is far behind the curve, as a January report from the Reason Foundation (which publishes this website) makes clear.
California is one of 27 states that does not allow doctors and other medical professionals outside the state to treat or consult with patients. It also has not joined the 40-state Interstate Medical Licensure Compact, which allows doctors to apply for licensure in multiple states at once.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s telemedicine emergency order during COVID offered only minor regulatory relief to patient privacy and data security regulations. With the state of emergency now gone, that temporary deregulation is gone too.
In 2023, the state adopted a new law allowing doctors licensed in other states to provide telehealth services, but only
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