Expanded telehealth access extended for two years. The ‘omnibus’ fiscal 2023 spending bill before Congress Thursday contains extensions for four areas of improved national telehealth access developed during the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) starting in January 2020. Because they apply to Medicare and high-deductible health plans (HDHP), they become guidelines for commercial health plans and help to cement telehealth as a permanent part of health care delivery.
The two-year extensions include:
- Retained expanded reimbursable access to telehealth for Medicare beneficiaries put into place during the PHE
- A two-year delay in implementing the Medicare telemental health in-person requirement
- Extension of safe harbor provisions to offer telehealth as part of HDHPs with Health Savings Accounts (HSAs)
- Extension of the Acute Hospital Care at Home Program. This waiver permits some emergency department and inpatient hospital patients to be treated from their homes.
At this time, the PHE is set to expire on 11 January 2023. It has been extended every 90 days since January 2020 and may be extended again. The bill did not extend the Ryan Haight in-person waiver for the remote prescription of controlled substances, a wise move in this Editor’s view given the abuse of this waiver by certain telehealth organizations. It does request the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to promulgate final regulations specifying the circumstances in which a Special Registration for telemedicine may be issued for controlled substances, and the procedure for obtaining the registration.
Another wise move on Congress’ part in this monster 4,000+ page, $1.7 trillion spending bill is to further prohibit the creation of a national patient ID for healthcare that supposedly would facilitate EHR interoperability.
The bill is supposed to come before a lame-duck Congress at the eleventh hour before their Christmas leave on Thursday. Some opposition has coalesced due to wasteful earmarks covering pet projects that are included in the (unread by most representatives) bill and the fact that a new Congress with a change of party control in the House will be seated in January. However, for those of us in the US telehealth business, these inclusions are not controversial nor wasteful, and if the omnibus bill fails for some reason, will likely be included in any short-term extensions which are typical in keeping the government running. ATA release, POLITICO Future Pulse
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