House Measure Seeks To Preserve Expanded Telehealth Services For Medicare Beneficiaries
- July 17, 2020
MedCity News (7/16, Reuter) reports that since the coronavirus pandemic started, HHS has “made sweeping changes that expanded telehealth coverage for Medicare patients. A bill introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday would make some of them permanent.” The measure “would codify one of the most significant changes made during the Covid-19 pandemic: It would allow Medicare patients to continue to access telehealth appointments at home.”
Modern Healthcare (7/16, Cohen, Subscription Publication) reports that the bill, called the Protecting Access to Post-COVID-19 Telehealth Act, “would authorize CMS to continue reimbursement for telemedicine services for 90 days after a public health emergency ends, as well as giving HHS the authority to waive telemedicine restrictions in Medicare during future emergencies and disasters, as the agency did for COVID-19.” Some “9 million Medicare beneficiaries have received telemedicine services during the pandemic, according to CMS Administrator Seema Verma.”
Healthcare IT News (7/16, Miliard) also covers the story.