Commercial Insurance
The Alliance has shaped thinking on Capitol Hill and convened stakeholders to advocate for the need to extend flexibilities around the telehealth safe harbor enacted in the CARES Act for individuals with high-deductible health plans coupled with a health savings account (HDHP-HSA) before the impending cliff on December 31, 2021. While this deadline has been missed, we came very close on this in 2021 and believe there is a good chance of success early in 2022.
- Letter to Congress to Extend the HDHP-HSA Telehealth Flexibility – The Alliance convened a sign-on letter urging Congress to extend the CARES Act flexibility that enabled employers and insurers to offer pre-deductible coverage of telehealth services for individuals with HDHP-HSAs. This letter was signed by over 70 organizations, which included patient groups, clinician organizations, and employer coalitions. Building on this work, the Alliance advocated for bipartisan legislation in the House and Senate – the Telehealth Expansion Act and the Primary and Virtual Care Affordability Act.
Medicare
The Alliance continues to push for Congress and CMS to make permanent the many telehealth flexibilities provided during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Alliance strongly advocates for Congress to advance permanent telehealth reform including, at a minimum, removing arbitrary restrictions on where a patient must be located in order to utilize telehealth services; ensuring federally qualified health centers, critical access hospitals, and rural health centers can furnish telehealth services; authorizing the Secretary to allow additional telehealth practitioners, services, and modalities; and removing restrictions on telemental health services.
- 430 Group Letter to Congress to Address ‘Telehealth Cliff’ – The Alliance for Connected Care was instrumental in the formation of a group letter to Congress signed by more than 430 national and regional organizations outlining the immediate actions necessary to ensure CMS has the authority to continue to make telehealth services available once the national COVID-19 public health emergency ends, and making clear that Medicare beneficiaries will lose access to virtual care options if Congress does not act, otherwise known as the ‘telehealth cliff.’
State Licensure Flexibilities
The Alliance has been active at the state-level on issues around cross-state licensure and the need to reform outdated licensure laws that impose barriers in access to care for patients. View our activity here, and information on our Medical Excellence Zone effort here.
- Governor Letter on Maintaining Licensure Flexibilities – The Alliance co-led a letter signed by more than 230 organizations and sent to all 50 governors stressing the urgency of expiring licensure waivers and the impact on patient access to care. The letter urges state governors to act immediately to ensure patients can access the care they need where they reside and when they need it, and outlines a set of principles to consider for licensure policies that should be in place right now to ensure patient access to care.
DEA Special Telemedicine Registration
The Alliance has continued to advocate for the DEA to issue the long overdue Special Registration for Telemedicine Prescribing of Controlled Substances. View our activity here.
- Letter to ONDCP Special Telemedicine Registration – Building on 2020 efforts convening over 80 organizations in a letter to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) calling on the DEA to finalize the special registration for telemedicine, the Alliance continued to push this issue in 2021. A letter to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) applauded their inclusion of the telemedicine special registration for the prescribing of controlled substances this year as part of the Biden Administration’s First-Year Drug Policy Priorities. The anticipated registration would enable a practitioner to deliver, distribute, dispense, or prescribe via telemedicine a controlled substance to a patient who has not been medically examined in-person by the prescribing practitioner.
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