2 More Telehealth Bills Return to Congress For Another Try

Two popular telehealth bills that failed to make it through last year’s Legislature are being reintroduced this week on Capitol Hill, adding to a growing number of connected health bills aimed at continuing the momentum for telehealth beyond the coronavirus pandemic.

On Monday, Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) re-submitted the Telehealth Response for E-prescribing Addiction Therapy Services (TREATS) Act, which would make permanent certain emergency actions passed during the coronavirus pandemic to boost telehealth access for substance use disorder (SUD) treatment.

“The rollout of telehealth waivers has both helped patients maintain access to care safely at home and increased access to care for those who didn’t otherwise have access to in-person treatment,” Portman, who’d first introduced the bill with Whitehouse last July, said in a new press release. “As we move forward and look to life beyond this pandemic, we must make sure that the advances to care and access that telehealth is currently providing are not lost, and that’s exactly what this bill will do.” 

In addition, the Alliance for Connected Care is reporting that Senators Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Tim Scott (R-SC) plan to reintroduce the Telehealth Modernization Act, which was first introduced by then-Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) last July.

That bill, which has the support of the alliance, looks to make permanent several emergency telehealth laws that were enacted to expand telehealth access and coverage during the COVID-19 public health emergency. In particular, it would:

• Remove geographic and originating site restrictions from Medicare coverage of telehealth services;
• Ensure that telehealth services at federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) and rural health clinics (RHCs) are covered by Medicare;
• Give the Health and Human Services Secretary the authority to permanently expand the types of telehealth services covered by Medicare (the list now stands at 135) and the types of care providers who able to deliver those services; and
• Enable Medicare to cover more telehealth services used for hospice and home dialysis care.

Both bills join a crowded field of proposed legislation aimed at putting telehealth front and center as Congress looks to set the healthcare landscape beyond the PHE.

The TREATS Act targets a substance abuse crisis that had been building before the pandemic. It would eliminate the in-person exam requirement and allow care providers to prescribe certain controlled substances via telehealth in Medicated Assistant Treatment (MAT) therapy programs, as well as expand Medicare coverage for mHealth services to include audio-only phone calls.

The bill has the support of the American Society for Addiction Medicine, National Safety Council, Community Catalyst, Boston Medical Center, National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers and The Kennedy Forum.