https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/07/31/covid-19-brought-telehealth-revolution-now-trump-wants-stay-column/5556733002/Trump administration aims to keep telehealth revolution here to stay
Regulation slowed down access to telehealth, but now reforms have made it accessible.
Alex M. Azar IIOpinion contributor
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced healthcare providers around America, and across the world, to adapt in real time, from reorganizing hospitals to devising treatment protocols as rapidly as possible. But one of the most fundamental transformations has applied to all of healthcare, not just COVID-19 testing and treatment: the meteoric rise of telehealth.
In just weeks, Americans went from using telehealth — carrying out medical appointments over virtual connections rather than in person — in a relatively narrow set of circumstances to making it one of the most common ways to receive healthcare. This spring, from March to April, the number of patients using telehealth services in traditional Medicare increased from roughly 13,000 a week to over 1.5 million a week.
In February, just 0.1% of primary care visits covered by traditional Medicare were done via telehealth. By April, it was 43.5% — more than a 400-fold increase.
Bold action by President Trump and his administration made this explosive growth possible. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services dramatically expanded Medicare coverage for telehealth, doubling the number of services that can be provided through telehealth to include everything from emergency department visits to eye exams and therapy services.
HHS’s Office for Civil Rights provided flexibility to allow health care providers to do telehealth visits immediately using popular communication apps like FaceTime and Skype, without any additional paperwork and without risking penalties for HIPAA violations. HHS’s Office of Inspector General provided flexibility for healthcare providers to reduce or waive cost-sharing for telehealth in federal programs, so that providers can limit costs to patients using telehealth.
A person at a laptop displaying a doctor in a telehealth consultation
These changes are largely emergency exceptions to the existing federal regulations around telehealth — regulations that explain much of why telehealth hadn’t taken off before the pandemic.
For most services before the pandemic, Medicare simply didn’t pay for telehealth unless you lived outside of a metropolitan areas or in a rural area with a shortage of a certain type of providers. Believe it or not, this meant that you could live three hours north of Duluth, Minnesota, or three hours south of Phoenix, Arizona, by the Mexican border, and still not be eligible for telehealth coverage unless there was an official shortage of the type of healthcare provider in your area.
In addition, telehealth services in Medicare and Medicaid typically