In a Dec. 11 letter to Congressional leaders, the organizations ask for the following policies to be extended until the end of next year in order to provide patients care when and where they need it: removing geographic licensing restrictions; allowing the location of the patient to be an originating site for care; giving HHS the authority to determine appropriate telehealth services and providers; and allowing Federally Qualified Health Centers, rural health clinics and critical access hospitals to furnish telehealth and be fairly reimbursed.
The letter asks Congress to include the telehealth extensions as part of the end-of-year package to fund the federal government in the absence of permanent telehealth reform.
The organizations that signed the letter:
- Alliance for Connected Care
- American Telemedicine Association
- College of Healthcare Information Management Executives
- Connected Health Initiative
- eHealth Initiative
- Health Innovation Alliance
- HIMSS
- PCHAlliance
More articles on telehealth:
UW Medicine launches telehealth program that provides patients care through text message
How this New Jersey health system is training physicians to deliver bad news over telehealth
Patients’ likes & dislikes about telemedicine: 5 things to know
