Dear NHCMA Members,

 

As you know, there has been an intense lobbying effort to get Medicare and insurance carriers to cover a range of Telehealth and Telemedicine services. We all received some very good news last week.

 

CMS previously announced that Medicare would pay for certain services conducted by audio-only telephone between beneficiaries and their doctors and other clinicians. Now, CMS is broadening that list to include many behavioral health and patient education services. CMS is also increasing payments for these telephone visits to match payments for similar office and outpatient visits. This would increase payments for these services from a range of about $14-$41 to about $46-$110. The payments are retroactive to March 1, 2020. E&M codes 99441-99443 will be paid the equivalent of codes 99212-99214.

 

 

Guidance Documents