The House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing this month to discuss extending pandemic-era policies that expanded access to telehealth under Medicare. Without urgent action by lawmakers, these telehealth flexibilities will expire at the end of the year.
When COVID-19 confined everyone to their homes, "Congress and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services acted to remove barriers that had previously prevented many seniors from utilizing telehealth," as the Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee Chair Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., put it at a hearing this month.
Between April 2021 and August 2022, well over one-quarter of Medicare seniors reported having used some form of telemedicine in the previous month, according to an analysis by the Department of Health and Human Services. A study of University of California health care facilities found that, during the two years of the pandemic, telehealth technologies saved patients a total of 53.7 million miles in travel.
Telehealth can save patients and the health care system money, too, by preventing unnecessary trips to the emergency room and helping deliver diagnoses sooner.