News Archive

Federal officials are making $12 million available for three projects that aim to approve maternal and obstetrics care for underserved populations in rural America, and they expect telehealth to be part of the program.

The Notice of Funding Opportunity from the Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA’s) Federal Office of Rural Health Policy comes as federal officials kick off Black Maternal Health Week. The HRSA’s Rural Maternity and Obstetrics Management Strategies (RMOMS) program, which will offer the three award recipients grants of up to $1 million annually for four years, aims to boost outcomes in rural and underserved population by testing new models of connected care.

CMS has added a number of CPT codes to the list of audiology and speech-language pathology services provided by telehealth that will be covered by Medicare during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) published recommendations to Congress on March 15th to continue some Medicare COVID-19 telehealth coverage expansions only temporarily to allow more time for study before making any policies permanent. Devoting the final chapter of its report to telehealth, MedPAC advises that Medicare continue for a “limited duration (e.g. one to two years)” covering telehealth services regardless of patient location, including beneficiaries at home, as well as the over 140 telehealth services that were temporarily added to the Physician Fee Schedule, such as emergency department visits. MedPAC also recommends maintaining the allowance of audio-only interactions based on clinical assessment and potential for clinical benefit, for instance audio-only evaluation and management visits with established patients.

Lawmakers are once again taking aim at the substance abuse epidemic with a wide-ranging bill that expands access to telehealth – including audio-only phone services – for medication-assisted treatment (MAT) programs.

The policy changes are part of the Comprehensive Addiction & Recovery Act (CARA) 3.0 bill, introduced last week by US Senators Rob Portman (R-OH), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Shelley Moore Caputo (R-WV), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH). The bill, which was submitted Last December but failed to make it through the Legislature, aims to boost funding authorization levels established in the original CARA legislation in 2016 and adds connected health measures to tackle the growing opioid abuse crisis.

Telehealth compensated for much of the care delivery gap brought on by COVID-19, however social determinants of health effected utilization rates significantly, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open that raises concern for care access disparities.

From March to June of 2019, telehealth claims made up less than 0.3 percent of total outpatient consults. One year and a pandemic later, telehealth claims made up a quarter (24 percent) of privately insured outpatient consults, based on claims data for more than 36.6 million working-age, privately insured members who were continuously enrolled from March through June of 2020.

Overall, the researchers found that outpatient visits in brick-and-mortar locations decreased by 37 percent, with 1.63 visits per enrollee in 2019 and 1.02 visits per enrollee in 2020.

The Center for Connected Health Policy (CCHP) has released a new updated telehealth billing guide as a follow up to its 2020 billing guide to provide a helpful tool for healthcare entities trying to navigate the complexities of billing for telehealth and virtually delivered services.  Policy changes during the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) have only made telehealth billing rules more nuanced.  The updated billing guide addresses whether or not there is reimbursement for telehealth both generally and/or during the PHE, as well as how to correctly bill for a telehealth encounter, which is one of the most common policy questions CCHP receives as the National Telehealth Policy Resource Center (NTRC – P). Further complicating the billing process is the need to understand whether current rules are only applicable during the pandemic as well as the fact that payer policies continue to vary from payer to payer.  For example, policies that apply to a Medicare beneficiary remain different than those that apply to a state Medicaid enrollee or to patients that have private insurance.