Sponsors (74)
Official title: Amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to expand access to telehealth services, and for other purposes.
Introduced April 2, 2025 by Brian Emanuel Schatz · Last progress April 2, 2025
The bill substantially expands and clarifies Medicare telehealth access and oversight—improving convenience, equity, and transparency for beneficiaries—while increasing federal costs and creating clinical-quality, privacy, fraud, and administrative risks that will require robust monitoring and implementation resources.
Medicare beneficiaries (including rural, tribal, and homebound patients and those with mobility/transportation barriers) will get substantially broader access to telehealth — including audio-only visits, telehealth from any location, removal of the six-month in-person requirement for telemental health, and expanded practitioner eligibility via HHS waivers.
Federally Qualified Health Centers and Rural Health Clinics will be able to bill telehealth as outpatient FQHC/RHC services and providers will have a clearer safe-harbor path to supply remote-monitoring devices, improving access to remote care and remote monitoring for vulnerable patients.
The bill strengthens program integrity and transparency by funding HHS OIG audits, requiring publication of aggregate telehealth billing/outlier data, and mandating targeted education for outlier clinicians, which should reduce improper payments and improve oversight.
Taxpayers and the Medicare program face higher federal spending and fiscal pressure because expanded telehealth coverage, broader practitioner eligibility, device safe harbors, and authorized implementation funding could increase utilization and program costs.
Broad endorsement of audio-only visits and expanded practitioner waivers could lower clinical quality or result in inconsistent care for conditions that need in-person exams or specialized clinicians.
Waivers, relaxed originating-site rules, device supply safe harbors, and increased telehealth billing could raise program-integrity, fraud, and privacy risks if oversight and de-identification/privacy protections are insufficient.
Based on analysis of 8 sections of legislative text.
Permanently removes Medicare’s geographic telehealth limits (effective Oct 1, 2025), expands eligible providers and technologies, adds oversight and reporting, and requires accessibility, training, and quality-measure updates.
Removes Medicare’s longstanding geographic limits on telehealth and makes other permanent changes to expand telehealth access for Medicare Part A and Part B beneficiaries, effective Oct 1, 2025, while directing HHS to issue guidance, training, and quality measures to support accessible telehealth for people with limited English proficiency and disabilities. The bill also creates a new safe-harbor for furnishing telehealth technologies to Medicare beneficiaries, requires oversight and outlier monitoring with modest OIG funding, and requires CMS to publish telehealth utilization, spending, and outcomes data on a regular basis.