Sponsors (38)
The bill expands and makes permanent telehealth-based cardiac and pulmonary rehab—improving access and billing clarity for providers and patients—while increasing Medicare costs and creating potential clinical and compliance risks that must be managed.
Medicare beneficiaries with heart or lung disease can receive cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation at home via telehealth, expanding access to care and convenience for patients who face travel, mobility, or facility-access barriers.
Hospitals and practitioners can bill for home-based, provider-designated hospital services under Hospital Without Walls–style standards, enabling continuity of care without facility visits and supporting provider revenue for remote service delivery.
Makes permanent the COVID-era telehealth flexibilities for cardiac and pulmonary rehab, reducing regulatory uncertainty for providers and patients about ongoing telehealth coverage and program availability.
Medicare enrollees: expanding telehealth coverage for home-based rehab is likely to increase Medicare spending, which could raise federal deficits or require budget offsets paid for by taxpayers or other program changes.
Higher-risk patients: delivering rehab at home via telehealth may be clinically inappropriate for some individuals and could reduce opportunities for in-person evaluation, potentially increasing safety risks for certain patients.
Hospitals and practitioners: quickly designating patients' homes as provider-based locations for billing may create administrative complexity and compliance risks during implementation, raising audit and operational burdens on providers.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Codifies Medicare telehealth flexibilities so certain cardiac and pulmonary rehab services can be furnished in a patient’s home and treated as hospital provider-based locations.
Introduced January 28, 2025 by John Joyce · Last progress January 28, 2025
Codifies COVID-era Medicare telehealth flexibilities to let cardiac, intensive cardiac, and pulmonary rehabilitation services be provided in a patient’s home and treated as hospital provider-based locations. It directs HHS to issue standards (consistent with prior Hospital Without Walls waivers) so hospitals and practitioners can furnish these rehab services via telehealth from patients’ homes and expands statutory telehealth/ originating-site rules to waive certain geographic limits for those services.