Resources & Reports

CCHP’s year end telehealth update is here! This newsletter includes the following topics – Medicare Telehealth Flexibilities at Risk of Expiration: What You Need to Know; DEA Extends Telehealth Controlled Substance Allowances Through 2025; VA Expands Telehealth Access for Rural Veterans; Telehealth and Medicaid Updates in the New Hospital Outpatient Payment Rule; Supreme Court to Decide on FCC’s Universal Service Fund; Joint Commission 2025 National Patient Safety Goals for Telehealth; Latest Developments in CCHP’s Telehealth Policy Finder and Policy Trend Map; Telehealth Use Among Adults with Diabetes. 

As December 31, 2024 quickly approaches, those in the telehealth community, as well as those who receive services via telehealth, may begin to wonder if the federal waivers regarding Medicare telehealth policies will again be extended, or if they will come to an end once the clock hits midnight. As of the writing of this newsletter, no one is absolutely certain what will happen in the coming weeks. Just after the Presidential election in early November, there were some indications that the waiver deadline may pass without any Congressional action taken to extend the waivers, as talk on Capitol Hill seemed to indicate a desire to wait until the new Congress was installed in 2025 before any major policy decisions were made. However, in recent weeks there have been rumors that an extension might be passed before the December 31 deadline.

As 2024 draws to a close, the Center for Connected Health Policy (CCHP) is releasing its annual roundup of state telehealth legislation. This year, state legislatures continued to refine, expand, and impose new standards on telehealth, responding to evolving needs in healthcare delivery and leveraging lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. Notably, increasingly specific requirements for various telehealth modalities, including remote patient monitoring and audio-only services, demonstrate states’ efforts to ensure telehealth remains accessible and aligns with high standards of care.

CCHP hopes everyone enjoys the Thanksgiving festivities this week and wishes each of you a season full of abundance and gratitude. Amidst various policy uncertainties, CCHP remains grateful for the opportunity to provide an abundance of resources to our partners and readers. In recent weeks, CCHP has released new materials related to recent federal and state telehealth policy updates.

Today the Center for Connected Health Policy (CCHP)is releasing its Summary of state telehealth policy changes for 2024.  Additionally, we are also making available a state summary chart showing where states stand on many key telehealth policies, as well as an infographic highlighting our key findings.  As always, the most current information in CCHP’s online policy finder tool may be exported for each state into a PDF document. Note that the last review period for this report was late May through early September 2024. It is possible that in some cases, after a state was reviewed by CCHP, the state may have passed a significant piece of legislation or implemented an administrative policy change that CCHP may not have captured in this update of the report. Those types of changes will be incorporated into future updates of our online policy finder.