APA Action Alert: Extend Medicare Telehealth Flexibilities
/Retain Medicare Telehealth Services Coverage Flexibilities for 12 months
Thank you for taking part in the more than 10,400 messages sent in March asking for audio-only telehealth services coverage in Medicare. Through your messages you and your colleagues convinced the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to begin covering these services, enabling patients to get the treatment they need during the COVID-19 crisis.
CMS is now indicating that Congress must step in to extend coverage, and we need to preserve Medicare’s behavioral services telehealth coverage expansions for 12 months following the end of the COVID-19 emergency period. Telehealth is helping to ensure that Medicare patients receive timely and crucial mental health services. Older Americans are especially reliant on this telehealth expansion as it allows for audio-only services, treatment of beneficiaries in their homes and removes restrictions of care due to location. Many Medicare patients are isolated at home or in nursing facilities and living in rural areas without adequate provider networks or reliable broadband service. Clinical psychologists have shared heart-wrenching stories with us about how important these services are to their patients.
Because need for telehealth and audio-only services access will remain long after the COVID-19 emergency period, we are urging a 12-month extension of telehealth coverage of psychological services to continue providing flexibility to patients, and to give CMS and Congress time to collect and evaluate data and potentially make some telehealth expansions permanent.
Whether or not you are a Medicare provider, we urge you to contact your members of Congress. We strongly encourage you to put this message into your own words as much as possible, and to include an example or two from your own practice about the importance of telehealth services coverage.