Congress passed the omnibus spending bill that expanded coverage of telehealth services, but experts fear that the bill failed to detail which telehealth services would be covered by insurers, FastCompany reported March 12.
The $1.5 trillion legislation that permitted telehealth flexibilities such as Medicare-enrolled providers to bill for telehealth services and Medicare to cover all telehealth visits that take place in a patients' home and in medical facilities, is causing some experts to worry about what the bill left out.
Sen. Mark Warner said the bill didn't convey which services are ultimately included and how much telehealth services should cost versus in-person care.
Niam Yaraghi, PhD, assistant professor of business technology at University of Miami's Herbert Business School, said he worries that the bill focuses too much on telehealth access for patients, which could lead healthcare providers to abandon the value-based care model in favor of a pay-per-service approach.
The omnibus bill, which extended Medicare coverage of telehealth for five months after the end of the public health emergency for several types of providers, failed to include critical access hospitals, which primarily serve rural areas. This means critical-access hospitals will no longer be able to bill Medicare for telehealth services when the public health emergency ends.
It is not yet clear why critical access hospitals weren't included, but advocates say they are going to fight to ensure the issue is fixed before the public health emergency ends.