Making Telehealth Flexibilities Permanent for Medicare Beneficiaries
In 2021, lawmakers signed a piece of legislation that created more telehealth flexibilities to ensure that Medicare beneficiaries had access to care during the COVID-19 pandemic.
While this legislation was intended to be temporary and is set to expire on December 31, 2024, the recently introduced Telehealth Modernization Act of 2024 aims to make these telehealth flexibilities permanent.
According to this recent article in mHealth Intelligence, the new legislation would permanently eliminate geographic restrictions on originating sites for telehealth services and allow rural health clinics and federally qualified health centers to receive Medicare reimbursement for telehealth services.
The new bill would also permanently add audio-only telehealth coverage to the Medicare program, as well as allow for the use of telehealth for hospice care and home dialysis assessments if clinically appropriate.
A wide-range of healthcare trade organizations support this bill. These include the American Hospital Association (AHA), American Telemedicine Association/ATA Action, Consumer Technology Association, Health Innovation Alliance, American Medical Association (AMA), National Rural Health Association (NRHA), and Alliance for Aging Research.
The news of this legislation comes on the heels of our blog post last week, which highlighted how 83 percent of patients want virtual care to be integrated with their existing healthcare services and medical records.
This new bill, along with widespread support from healthcare industry organizations, reinforces how telehealth is here to stay. For telehealth solution providers, this means ongoing opportunities for growth and innovation.
One key area of innovation that is critical for all telehealth providers is the ability to integrate solutions that enable the seamless access and sharing of medical records – especially with telehealth continuing to be vital.
Our new GetPatientRecords offering meets this need by simplifying access to electronic medical records anywhere in the nation through a very simple integration.
GetPatientRecords provides instant and secure access to vital patient information without the need for manual processes or individual interfaces to Electronic Health Records (EHR) or heavy HIT systems. It enables very simple patient queries using just patient names and geographic areas – removing many of the hurdles for effective health data exchange.
RosettaHealth can assist with any health information challenges you might have, book a free consultation with one of our interoperability experts.