In advance of tomorrow’s House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Health hearing, the Partnership for Employer-Sponsored Coverage issued a statement for the record expressing support for expansion of telehealth services for Americans through their employer.

In P4ESC’s statement for the hearing, entitled “The Future of Telehealth: How COVID-19 is Changing the Delivery of Virtual Care,” the coalition states that “the time is ripe to modernize laws to increase access to telehealth services as patients, health providers, and coverage plan sponsors continue to adapt to and comply with remote working and social distancing measures.”

Further, the employer coalition expresses its eagerness "to work on bipartisan legislation to expand employee access to telemedicine, including enabling employers to offer a telehealth service plan to all employees regardless of their enrollment in the employer’s medical coverage," and notes "[t]he pandemic has offered employees the ability to receive mental and behavioral health services via telemedicine, and we strongly support making this access permanent." The full text of the statement is available HERE.

P4ESC supports: 1) treating telehealth services as an excepted benefit which would enable employers to offer this type of coverage to part-time and variable workforces, and other employees not enrolled in the employers’ medical plan; 2) reforming licensure requirements to enable services to be offered across state lines; 3) establishing a national set of standards for telemedicine services to address state-based requirements that have not kept pace with technology, practice site and remote working advances, including eliminating originating site and prior provider relationship requirements; and 4) clarifying that CARES Act telemedicine provisions are effective for plan years on or after January 1, 2019 (employer plan years vary between non-calendar and calendar year basis).