Bipartisan telehealth access effort gets a revival
The bill would make permanent the temporary emergency policies implemented for Medicare when the pandemic began.
The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the rise of telehealth medicine, which in turn has highlighted the urgency of updating Medicare coverage rules for such services.
To that end, U.S. Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Angus King (I-Maine) are co-sponsoring the “Telehealth Modernization Act” — bipartisan legislation that would update coverage restrictions that have long prevented the nation’s 61 million Medicare beneficiaries from accessing life-saving telehealth services.
“Telehealth services have been a lifeline to patients and providers during the pandemic, ensuring that individuals can continue to receive quality health care from the safety and convenience of their own homes,” Collins and King said in a joint statement. “This bipartisan bill would expand telehealth services for Medicare beneficiaries, ensuring that seniors in Maine and across the country retain access to remote home health services during the COVID-19 emergency and future public health emergencies.”
At the beginning of the pandemic, Congress granted temporary emergency waivers designed to ensure access to telehealth services for Medicare beneficiaries. In April 2020, as coronavirus raged across the country, nearly 45% of Medicare FFS primary care visits were provided through telehealth, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. What’s more from mid-March 2020 through early July 2020, more than 10.1 million beneficiaries accessed telehealth services, HHS officials say.
Those temporary waivers, though extended for 90 days on Jan. 16, are set to expire in April. Without further congressional action, Collins and King say the expiration will result in chaos for tens of millions of Medicare beneficiaries — including many who have come to rely on telehealth for critically needed care.
Two permanent changes
The Telehealth Modernization Act would make two permanent changes:
- It would ensure that patients can access telehealth anywhere by permanently removing Medicare’s so-called “geographic and originating site” restrictions, which require that the patient both live in a rural area and use telehealth at a doctor’s office or certain other clinical sites.
- It would protect access to telehealth for patients in rural areas.
The bill also would give the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services new authority to help patients continue to access telehealth from physical therapists, speech-language pathologists, and other health care providers, while giving Medicare recipients access to many more telehealth services. Another component of the bill would help Medicare hospice and home dialysis patients use telehealth to keep receiving necessary care.
This is not the first time Congress has attempted to update telehealth coverage restrictions. In July 2020, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) introduced a similar bill with the same name as the one Collins and King are backing. Alexander received little support, but three senators — Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) — re-introduced the bi-partisan bill in February 2021. The Senate has never voted on the act.