Congress Proposes Fix to RHC Telehealth Policy in End of Year Funding Deal

Sarah Hohman, Director of Government Affairs, NARHC

In order to avoid a government shutdown in just a few days, Congress recently released text of a bipartisan deal to fund the federal government through March 14, 2025. As a reminder, the federal fiscal year began on October 1. The last Continuing Resolution (CR) punted the full year appropriations negotiations until December 20, but as Congress has not yet reached a deal for FY25, they are again utilizing this short-term measure which will set up another funding deadline in just a few months.

Hitching a ride on this CR are a plethora of important health care extenders that Congress was expected to continue, plus one critical, hard-fought victory for the RHC program!

If passed, in addition to extending Medicare telehealth flexibilities on geographic and originating site requirements, from January 1, 2025-December 31, 2026, RHCs will be able to bill for medical telehealth services normally (not using G2025) and will receive their All-Inclusive Rate payment for these services.

Since early 2020, RHCs have been at a disadvantage in expanding their telehealth services due to a quickly established, COVID-era policy that resulted in them receiving approximately $95 per telehealth encounter.

NARHC, alongside all of you in the RHC community, have been fiercely advocating for a fix to this policy. Through hundreds of Capitol Hill meetings, your use of the VoterVoice tool to ensure that your Members of Congress heard the RHC perspective directly, and more, this has been a top priority for NARHC this Congress. Establishing reimbursement parity for telehealth services is a long-awaited success!

While this text has been released publicly after lengthy negotiations amongst Congressional leadership, Congress still needs to pass it before the policy is final.

Given their rapidly approaching deadline and the significant amount of policy contained in this 1,500-page deal, it is expected to pass. However, a number of Members, particularly those that oppose large government funding packages, are once again frustrated by the size of this bill and the many, expensive policy riders tacked on. If enough Members feel this way and tank the bill, it is not impossible that Congress simply passes a clean, short-term funding bill, keeping the federal government open, but leaving telehealth and many other policies to expire on December 31.

We will continue to update the RHC community on these developments and details, but in the meantime, please join us in celebrating the success of NARHC’s advocacy on this important issue. If signed into law, CMS will need to quickly operationalize the new RHC telehealth policy to end the G2025 billing and reimbursement structure and implement normal RHC billing, reimbursement, and cost reporting methodologies for medical telehealth services.

Stay tuned for more information on a NARHC webinar in early January where we’ll discuss telehealth policy in 2025 and much more.

Please contact Sarah.Hohman@narhc.org with any questions and get ready to join us in our continued advocacy efforts in the 119th Congress early next year.