BPC Health Project Issues Public Request for Information to Address Telehealth Coverage Beyond the Pandemic
Washington, DC – The Bipartisan Policy Center’s Health Project, with support from the Peterson Center on Healthcare and Helmsley Charitable Trust, is seeking information from health care providers, payers, patients, advocates, academics, and other stakeholders to shape future bipartisan policy proposals to address telehealth services and coverage.
This work builds on previous federal policy recommendations in two reports, Confronting Rural America’s Health Care Crisisand Tackling America’s Mental Health and Addiction Crisis Through Primary Care Integration, aimed at expanding access to telehealth services. The reports, respectively, recommend the permanent extension of expanded telehealth services during the pandemic and significant investments in broadband infrastructure, as well as expanding the use of telehealth and technology to support the integration of primary and behavioral health care services.
As members of Congress debate what the telehealth policy environment should look like, BPC’s next phase of work will be shaped by the feedback gained from this request for information.
“Telehealth flexibilities during the course of the pandemic were critical to helping those in need receive the care they required,” said Marilyn Werber Serafini, BPC director of the Health Project. “But telehealth services have yet to be fully understood in terms of impacts on cost, quality, and clinical outcomes. This request for information will help us better understand these impacts as we seek to develop sustainable policy recommendations.”
Questions are divided into four categories—telehealth adoption, workforce and clinical, coverage and payment, and other resources—and seek input on the continuation of recent flexibilities, telehealth reimbursement structure after the expiration of the public health emergency, and incentivizing high-value uses of telehealth.
BPC requests that all comments and feedback be submitted online by 11:59 p.m. ET on Friday, January 14.
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