New research from Georgetown’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms examines how federal and state policy has shaped the expansion of mobile health care, and what policymakers can do to transform mobile models into a durable part of the health care system that reaches rural and other hard-to-reach communities.
Mobile health can deliver in-person care directly to communities facing persistent access barriers, including provider shortages, transportation challenges, and structural inequities. While evidence shows mobile models can improve access across a wide range of services and populations, policy infrastructure has not kept pace.
Key findings include:
- Mobile health has largely been promoted as a piece of the broader response to specific policy priorities, such as crisis response, expanding opioid use disorder treatment, and improving rural access. However, it is a uniquely effective delivery platform that needs its own coherent policy framework.
- This approach has produced uneven progress across models. Some models of mobile health care, such as mobile crisis response and community paramedicine services are more likely to have standardized insurance coverage and tailored reimbursement, while other critical models, such as mobile primary care, remain dependent on short-term grants and fragmented reimbursement.
The report outlines policy recommendations to:
- Use Medicaid, insurance regulation, and state and federal grant-making to normalize and sustain mobile delivery;
- Align federal policy levers to support state infrastructure development and long-term sustainability; and
- Build platform-level regulatory frameworks across mobile health.
The report finds that the key policy question is no longer whether mobile health can improve access to care, but whether policymakers will build the durable frameworks needed to sustain and scale it.
Read the executive summary and full report here.