Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Chris Pappas (D-NH)
Today Congressman Chris Pappas (NH-01) held a roundtable conversation with local health advocates from organizations and hospitals, including New Futures, Speare Memorial Hospital, Home Care, Hospice and Palliative Care Alliance of NH, HealthFirst, to highlight the importance of telehealth for Granite Staters and his recently introduced bipartisan legislation to protect and expand access to telehealth.
Pappas’s Protecting Rural Telehealth Access Act would save patients time and money by making permanent Medicare coverage of telehealth services that began during the COVID-19 pandemic. The changes would enable patients to be treated at home, allow Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) or Rural Health Clinics (RHCs) to provide telehealth services, and expand coverage of audio-only services for certain conditions, among other changes.
“Telehealth enables Granite Staters to virtually access the right care at the right time while saving them both time and money,” said Congressman Pappas. “I joined local health care leaders and advocates to talk about the importance of telehealth for families and providers in our state and hear from them on how my bipartisan Protecting Rural Telehealth Access Act will help protect and strengthen telehealth access and services.”
Telehealth enables the delivery of care when in-person visits aren’t possible. Virtual care can help patients, especially those in rural areas, avoid long trips for routine follow-ups or specialty consults. With 13 of 26 of New Hampshire’s acute care hospitals operating as critical access hospitals for rural communities, making Medicare coverage of telehealth services permanent is critical to meeting the health needs of all Granite Staters.
Background:
Last March Congressman Pappas introduced the Audio-Only Telehealth Access Act, which would make Medicare’s coverage of audio-only telehealth services permanent and the Rural Health Innovation Act, which would strengthen access to care in rural areas by establishing a competitive grant program for Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) or Rural Health Clinics (RHCs) to increase staff, equipment, technology, and more. He also introduced the Modernizing Rural Physician Assistant and Nurse Practitioner Utilization Act, the Rural Health Clinic Location Modernization Act, and the Rural Behavioral Health Improvement Act. The bipartisan package of legislation makes necessary updates and modifications to federal guidelines and regulations to modernize access to Rural Health Clinics (RHCs) and improve services for more than 40 million Americans living in non-urban and rural communities. The bills also remove regulatory red tape and empower rural health care professionals to better meet the needs of the communities they serve.