TITLE 4: ECONOMIC RESOURCES DIVISION 7: INSURANCE
§ 7801. Definitions. The following definitions shall apply in this chapter. (a) “Distant site” means the place a mental or behavioral health services provider legally allowed to practice in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) is located while providing mental and/or behavioral health services by means of telehealth. (b) “Health benefit plan or policy” means a policy, contract, certificate, or agreement entered into, offered, or issued by a health insurance issuer to provide, deliver, arrange for, pay for, or reimburse any of the costs of mental health services pursuant to Title 4, Division 7, of the Commonwealth Code and includes Medicaid and any other public health care assistance program offered or administered by the CNMI or by any subdivision or instrumentality of the CNMI. (c) “Mental health services provider” or “behavioral health services provider” means: (1) a person licensed to provide mental and/or behavioral health services (or a person specifically exempted from the licensure requirements but permitted to practice in the field) under the Commonwealth Health Care Professions Licensing Board Regulations, including a psychiatrist, psychologist, marriage and family therapist, professional counselor and/or a mental health counselor, and social worker, or a similarly regulated professional; (2) a psychologist authorized to practice interjurisdictional psychology in the CNMI pursuant to the Psychology Interjurisdictional Compact (PSYPACT) as authorized in Public Law 22-23; or (3) any mental or behavioral health services provider authorized to practice under any other interjurisdictional or interstate compacts adopted by the CNMI. (d) “Mental health services” and “behavioral health services” shall mean any intervention, including assessment, diagnosis, treatment, education, monitoring, care management, or counseling, offered in a private or public, inpatient or outpatient setting, for the maintenance or enhancement of mental and/or behavioral health or the treatment of mental and/or behavioral disorders, including substance abuse disorders, in individual and group contexts. (e) “Health insurance issuer” shall mean an entity, as defined in 4 CMC § 7103(gg), subject to the insurance laws and regulations of the CNMI that contracts or offers to contract or to provide, deliver, arrange for, pay for, or reimburse any of the costs of mental and/or behavioral health services or otherwise contracts or offers to contract to provide a health benefit plan that includes mental and/or behavioral health services. (f) “Originating site” shall mean a site at which a patient is located at the time that mental and/or behavioral health services are provided to the patient by means of telehealth. (g) “Telehealth” shall mean the delivery of mental and/or behavioral health services through information and communication technologies which facilitate the assessment, diagnosis, consultation, treatment, education, monitoring (including
TITLE 4: ECONOMIC RESOURCES DIVISION 7: INSURANCE
remote patient monitoring), care management, and patient self-management, while such patient is at the originating site and the service provider is at the distant site. Telehealth modalities include but are not limited to: (1) synchronous technology, including live, two-way interaction between a patient and a provider using audiovisual or audio only telecommunications technology; (2) asynchronous or store-and-forward technology, including transmission of recorded health history through an electronic communications system to a practitioner, usually a specialist, who uses the information to evaluate the case or render a service outside of a real-time or live interaction; and (3) remote patient monitoring, including data collection from an individual in one location by electronic communication technologies and transmitted to a provider in another location for use in care and related support. Source: PL 23-13, § 2 (Nov. 22, 2023). Commission Comment: Legislative Findings.—In addition to severability and savings clause provisions, PL 23-13 included the following Findings and Purposes section: Section 1. Findings and Purposes. Public Law 22-23 recognized the Psychology Interjurisdictional Compact (PSYPACT) to establish legal recognition across state boundaries to psychologists licensed in another Compact state. PSYPACT further regulates the day-to-day practice of telepsychology across state boundaries by licensed psychologists, as well as the temporary, in-person, face-to-face practice of psychology across state boundaries by psychologists for 30 days within a calendar year. This bill contributes to the expansion of mental health services by requiring parity for payment of telehealth services in the CNMI. To implement PSYPACT and increase public access in the CNMI to professional psychological and other mental health services by telehealth, the Legislature finds the need to ensure the public is able to afford those services by requiring private payer, Medicaid and other governmental plans or policies, to provide coverage on an equal basis as in person services.