Medicare coverage of telehealth has expanded in the past two years — a giant leap forward from the previous decades of inertia under tight restrictions imposed by Section 1834(m) of the Social Security Act. Section 1834(m) strictly limited reimbursements by the patient’s geographic location, the types of facilities in which the patient could receive the service, allowable providers, allowable services, and even the mode of interaction, requiring live audio/video between the provider and patient (except store-and-forward technology allowed only in Alaska and Hawaii).

To reduce unnecessary office visits and expand the use of telehealth services, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and Congress have begun to relax these limits. Continue reading >