Congress is close to enacting a two-year authorization of Medicare telehealth services for older adults, renewing a pandemic-era coverage in the nation’s largest government health insurance program.
Legislation passed Thursday by the U.S. House of Representatives provides some relief for older Americans covered by Medicare health insurance who have come to rely on their physicians getting paid for virtual visits since such reimbursements began during the COVID-19 pandemic. The legislation that extends Medicare telehealth reimbursement for providers through Dec. 31, 2027 is headed to the U.S. Senate where passage is expected.
“The U.S. House stood tall today for telehealth, passing legislation in the minibus package with broad bipartisan support, which includes years-long extensions for several critical telehealth provisions,” said Alexis Apple, deputy executive director of the affiliated policy and legislative advocacy arm of the American Telemedicine Association.
ATA Action’s advocacy council member companies include: Amazon, which has expanded its telehealth services in the last year and telehealth providers Hims & Hers, Lifepoint Health, Teladoc Health, and Circle Medical, an affiliate of UCSF Health.
“Telehealth has proven it’s a valuable, relied-upon, and trusted option for healthcare delivery,” Apple said. “Confirming these extensions is the right thing to do, and we trust that our telehealth champions in both chambers will continue to do the right thing to preserve access to care for millions of Americans needing care, including our most vulnerable and underserved populations.”
Though lobbies for the extended telehealth reimbursement including the America Medical Association didn’t get what they wanted in the form of a permanent extension of Medicare payments, Apple said “these extensions are an important step forward.”
The AMA and others said the expiration of Medicare telehealth reimbursement during last year’s government “shutdown sharply reduced access to care.” The AMA cited a Brown University review of electronic medical record data that showed fee-for-service telemedicine visits dropped 24% nationally during the first 17 days of the shutdown. “Several states saw declines approaching or exceeding 40%, highlighting the sensitivity of access to policy disruptions,” the AMA said in January.
The extension passed by the House allows for providers to get paid for telehealth services delivered in any location, including a patient’s home rather than just a doctor’s office or hospital and certain other healthcare locations.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) first began to temporarily pay clinicians to provide telehealth services for Medicare beneficiaries on March 6, 2020 as the pandemic began. At the time, former CMS administrator Seema Verma said the changes allowed seniors “to communicate with their doctors without having to travel to a healthcare facility so that they can limit risk of exposure and spread of this virus.”
The idea was to give physicians and other clinicians flexibility to treat Medicare beneficiaries, opening the door to an array of providers to enter and expand their telehealth platforms to more Americans. That flexibility, supporters of such coverage said, should remain as a way to improve health outcomes and help older Americans maintain access to care.
“The AMA commends congressional leaders for finding common ground,” said Dr. David H. Aizuss, chair of the AMA Board of Trustees in a statement earlier this week praising members of Congress for a healthcare package that includes the two-year extension of telehealth coverage. “As physicians, we know that the best results come from focused attention on what is best for patients. That’s what happened here.”
