The social-distancing measures required to address the COVID-19 pandemic led to a newfound appreciation for the use of telehealth, a technological advance that has been available for several decades. State licensing laws for health care practitioners have impeded widespread use of telemedicine. Most states only permit health care practitioners to provide telehealth services to patients in the state in which the practitioners are licensed, a barrier to the free flow of health care services across state lines. Patients can travel to another state to receive medical treatment and even surgery from a doctor licensed in that state, but those doctors cannot provide telehealth services to the same patients unless they are licensed in the states in which the patients reside.
While the pandemic led many states to suspend the barriers to movement of health care practitioners and to the delivery of telemedicine across state lines, these were only temporary emergency measures. Fortunately, some states are taking steps to avoid a return to the status quo ante. In May 2021, Arizona’s governor signed into law House Bill (HB) 2454, which allows the state’s residents to receive telehealth services from providers who hold licenses outside the state but within any of the other states or the District of Columbia. In 2019, Florida’s governor signed HB 23 into law, similarly liberalizing telehealth regulations. On the federal level, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services expanded permanent coverage for telehealth services. Experts on telehealth regulations will compare recent state-level reforms and discuss the prospects for further reform on both the state and federal levels.
