📋 Medicare Telehealth Coverage Set to Expire March 31st (AARP Article)

[Winter2025VA]

FROM THE ARTICLE: Congress Faces March 31 Deadline to Extend Medicare Telehealth Coverage.

Benefit for home-based care begun during the pandemic will expire without lawmakers’ action.

By Susan Milligan, AARP.

Published February 27, 2025.

Unless Congress acts before March 31, millions of Medicare patients who have been able to use telehealth as part of their medical care since 2020 will lose coverage for the pandemic-era benefit starting in April.

The coverage has been a boon for those who have difficulty getting to an office to see a doctor, including older adults living in rural areas or with mobility problems. Caregivers strapped for time to transport their loved ones also have benefited.

USE THE LINK BELOW TO READ THE ARTICLE: https://www.aarp.org/health/medicare-insurance/info-2025/medicare-telehealth-coverage-deadline.html

[GailL1]

@Winter2025VA 

The CHANGE to the telehealth coverage is ONLY reverting back to where it was before the PHE (Public Health Emergency} - as many other things are.  This was in preplanned legislation and CMS based the new doc’s fee schedule on the new defined coverage.  This is for Traditional Medicare - 

Medicare.gov - Telehealth Coverage after March 31, 2025 

from the link:

Starting April 1, 2025, you must be in an office or medical facility located in a rural area (in the U.S.) for most telehealth services. If you aren't in a rural health care setting, you can still get certain Medicare telehealth services on or after April 1, including:

• Monthly End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) visits for home dialysis
• Services for diagnosis, evaluation, or treatment of symptoms of an acute stroke wherever you are, including in a mobile stroke unit
• Services for the diagnosis, evaluation, or treatment of a mental and/or behavioral health disorder (including a substance use disorder) in your home

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If you have a Medicare Advantage plan, read your explanation of benefits because some of them are continuing the telehealth coverage under a wider parameter - but it is up to the individual sponsor as to how they handle it.

There is a need for some telehealth but not for everything - docs don’t want the expanded liability of doing things this way when a face-to-face is necessary.  It had to be done while we were under pandemic rules - now that we no longer are under pandemic rules - it is back to normal.  

[Winter2025VA]

[2/28/25] Thanks for info @GailL1 . Thankfully I was NOT on Medicare back in 2020. So NOT into NO "face to face" but the way things are going this year 2025 in my Virginia location - we may be dealing with another pandemic.  😭

Hope not!!!

Oh well, time will tell I guess.

Nicole 👵

[GailL1]

@Winter2025VA wrote :  but the way things are going this year 2025 in my Virginia location - we may be dealing with another pandemic. 

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Oh, please say it isn’t so . . . . is it covid or the flu - I heard the scientist really missed the ball on the flu combination this year - state safe.

[Winter2025VA]

[2/28/25] ALL of what you mentioned plus @GailL1 . Around here folks feel a need to be up close & personal no matter what. Glad I am retired = forget group settings. Maybe in the future. Alot of infections from the downtown mass get togethers our area is famous for. Lots of conferences and so on. Let's be honest, everyone is breathing the same air in these hotels and conference centers. I am in and out at Walmart each week. So not hanging out inside any public buildings for now.

YOU WROTE: Oh, please say it isn’t so . . . . is it covid or the flu - I heard the scientist really missed the ball on the flu combination this year - state safe.