Congress Aims to Keep Telehealth Momentum Going Beyond the COVID-19 Crisis

July 27, 2020 - Lawmakers have followed up on their request to keep the Federal Communications Commission’s COVID-19 Telehealth Program going with a bill aimed at adding more funding to the now-shuttered program.

US Reps. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) and Dusty Johnson (R-SD) have introduced a bill that would give the program an FY 2020 supplemental appropriation of $200 million, effectively refurbishing a $200 million program that ran out of money earlier this month. The money would “remain available until expended,” and would be used to continue the program’s goals of supporting telehealth and mHealth programs addressing the coronavirus pandemic.

“During a public health crisis, families, seniors, and veterans need to have reliable access to their doctors and caregivers,” Spanberger – one of more than 40 lawmakers to sign and send a letter last week to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai asking for more information on the program – said in a press release. “Telehealth has provided a solution for thousands of Central Virginians to receive the high-quality care they need, while still taking precautions to protect themselves and their families from COVID-19.”

“Telehealth has clearly demonstrated its importance and its popularity during the pandemic, and our COVID-19 Telehealth Program Extension Act recognizes the role this technology should continue to play as we see a resurgence of the virus in communities across the country,” she added.

The bill is the second effort to add funding to the program, which was created out of the CARES Act in March and resulted in 539 approved funding applications from 47 states, Washington DC and Guam before running out of funds. In April, the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) sent a letter to Congressional leaders asking them to add $300 million to the program.

It’s also the latest in a string of events in the nation’s capital aimed at maintaining the momentum for telehealth expansion and coverage as the nation deals with the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.

Last week, the Taskforce for Telehealth Policy, a massive lobbying effort organized by the ATA, Alliance for Connected Care and NCQA, held a public meeting with the House Telehealth Caucus to support the Protecting Access to Post-COVID-19 Telehealth Act, which aims to make permanent a wide range of emergency telehealth coverage and access measures enacted over the past few months to deal with the COVID-19 crisis.

At the same time, Congress is being inundated with bills aimed at expanding telehealth coverage or studying how connected health is being used during the pandemic - with an eye toward legitimizing those efforts once the emergency has ended.

Just last week, several lawmakers introduced the COVID-19 Emergency Telehealth Impact Reporting Act of 2020 (HR 7695), which – like at least two bills recently introduced – aims to have the Health and Human Services Department collect data on telehealth use during the pandemic and analyze how these technology platforms have affected care delivery.

“Telehealth is undoubtedly the future of health care, especially for the rural communities that I am privileged to represent,” US Rep. John Curtis (R-UT), one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said in a press release. “Ultimately, Congress’ objective should be to make many – if not at all – of these regulatory changes permanent. Our bill is a significant step in that direction because it will ensure we are keeping patients’ health and reducing the costs of care through value-based medicine as our top priorities as we consider expanding telehealth services throughout the country.”

Also added to the books last week are the Telehealth Expansion Act of 2020 (S 4230), which aims to expand telehealth coverage for Medicare recipients beyond the COVID-19 crisis, and the KEEP Telehealth Options Act (S 4216), a Senate companion bill to the bill introduced in the House roughly two weeks ago.

Amid all the activity to expand telehealth freedoms beyond the state of emergency created to deal with the pandemic, the federal government did its part to give advocates some breathing room.

On July 23, noting that the pandemic is still raging in much of the country, HHS Secretary Alex Azar signed an extension of the public health emergency declaration, which was to have expired this month. The extension keeps in place most of the emergency measures through October 23.