Medicare and Telehealth- Feb. 2025

Hi everyone,

I've received multiple PMs about the recent news regarding Medicare and telehealth provisions ending come March 31st, 2025. I figured it would be helpful to get this out to everyone.

UPDATE 03/15- The most recent reconciliation bill to continue funding the government while they sort out disagreements on budgets has pushed back the Telehealth flexibilities with Medicare to 09/30/2025.

It is not a new thing that telehealth Medicare provisions were set to end 03/31/25. The last budget reconciliation bill passed last year set this date, along with keeping the rest of the government funded. Congress is still going through the budget bills and seeing what they want to continue versus cut, and these extended telehealth flexibilities set up from COVID times are one of those things.

If Congress cannot agree on what to do (shocking I know) then the telehealth flexibilities will end, only allowing certain services to remain at telehealth for non-rural areas (also as a notice, almost none of FL is considered "rural" by CMS), including mental health services. My GUESS is things will go back to how they were pre-COVID and require at least 1 in office appointment every 6 months, I want to say it was.

Obviously, for our telehealth only clinicians, this will pose a problem. But we have 0 information on what exactly is going to happen as it is up to Congress. I am unsure what the administration's current perspective is on the telehealth flexibilities but I would imagine given their current track record that it's probably not good.

For now, we wait and see what happens. It is NOT time to freak out (yet).

Info here for you too: https://www.medicare.gov/coverage/telehealth