Telehealth Policy Updates from the Omnibus Bill

Did I read all 4,000+ pages? Well no, not even close but I am very thankful for many organizations who have been able to pull out relevant information about Telehealth policy changes and extensions that many of you may be interested in. As you may recall, early in 2020 the United States Congress declared a Public Health Emergency (PHE) due to the rising thread of the novel Sars-Cov-2 virus, known of course as Covid. As we are coming up on three (3? really?) years since this began, there are a few worthy updates.

Medicare Providers

For the Medicare providers, many concessions continue in order to facilitate the use of Telehealth as well as your ability to get reimbursement for those Telehealth encounters. These are in place to continue until December 31, 2024. Examples include:

  • Temporary suspension of the geographic site requirement. Previously, reimbursement for Telehealth encounters was limited to those in certain rural or urban demographic areas that have been shown to have a provider shortage
  • They are continuing to allow providers in their own homes to be an eligible originating site.
  • Temporary suspension of the in person visit requirement for initiating services to new patients
  • continuing to allow for audio-only meetings in certain situations. At Secure Telehealth we pride ourselves on helping to make live audio-video sessions as easy as possible so we will continue to encourage and support that modality because we believe that even when not in-person, providers can be much more effective when they can see and hear their patients or clients.

Source “Center for Connected Health Policy” 12/23/2022

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Thanks,

-Daniel Mountain

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Dan Mountain