Medicare and Coronavirus: What You Need to Know
Reading Time: 2 MinutesLast Updated: February 21, 2023
With the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19), being informed about your Medicare coverage is more important than ever.
Medicare recently expanded its coverage of telehealth services. Telehealth enables beneficiaries to receive a wider range of healthcare services from doctors without having to travel to a healthcare facility. It also helps frontline clinicians stay safe themselves while treating people.
If your doctor orders a COVID-19 test for you, Medicare covers all of the costs. You should not have any co-pay, no matter what Medicare plan you’re enrolled in. There’s no vaccine for COVID-19 at this time, but when one becomes available, Medicare will cover it.
Medicare also covers all medically necessary hospitalizations. This includes extra days in the hospital for in-patients who were on the verge of being discharged, but were diagnosed with COVID-19 and had to stay longer under quarantine.
Doctors, nurse practitioners, clinical psychologists, and licensed clinical social workers can deliver telehealth services. Medicare beneficiaries can receive telehealth services in their home, as well as in any healthcare facility, a physician’s office, hospital, nursing home, or rural health clinic.
Telehealth services can include routine office visits, mental health counseling, and preventive health screenings for cancer and other illnesses.
By helping healthcare institutions across the nation offer medical services remotely, telehealth helps free up hospital emergency departments and doctors’ offices to deal with the most urgent COVID-19 cases.
During this emergency, Medicare will pay for telehealth services at the same rates as in-person services, giving doctors and other medical professionals the opportunity to reserve their offices to treat those who truly require in-person care.
We know many Medicare beneficiaries are concerned about the spread of coronavirus and the threat it poses to their well-being. That’s why we’ve taken these rapid steps to ensure that the Medicare program continues to protect our beneficiaries while maintaining trusted access to care in these uncertain times.
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Ruth J.
Please, please expand Telehealth services to cover Physical Therapy. Seniors are most at risk and need to follow the Stay in Place order by Florida’s governor, but they are suffering greatly with life threatening falls and high pain due to the lack of coverage for Physical Therapy through telehealth. Now is the time to allow services for outpatient physical therapy. Please approve this.
Ruth J.
Please, please expand Telehealth services to cover Physical Therapy. Seniors are most at risk and need to follow the Stay in Place order by Florida’s governor, but they are suffering greatly with life threatening falls and high pain due to the lack of coverage for Physical Therapy through telehealth. Now is the time to allow services for outpatient physical therapy. Please approve this.
Jill M.
Director Verma-
Thank you for your efforts thus far. It would be tremendously beneficial for physical therapists within outpatient physical therapy clinics to be authorized providers of Telehealth. It will allow our patients to both continue to recover from injury or surgery and NOT contribute to community transmission during the COVID-19 outbreak. It will also help avoid unnecessary complications or incomplete recovery during this time. PT is a critical service to keep people moving, thereby keeping them healthy. Please expand the current policy to include physical therapists as authorized providers of Telehealth.
Thank you!
Jim H.
Director Verma-Thank you for all the hard work you are putting in on behalf of all of America and our Seniors. You are doing an exceptional job during very trying circumstances. Recently you approved Physical, Speech and Occupational Therapy telehealth services when provided by a Physician’s office (incident to care). Could you expand the scope of telehealth to include these therapy services when provided by Physical, Speech and Occupational therapists working in their own practices? Thank you!
Holly V.
Please allow Medicare Paet B rehab to provide telehealth
Robert L.
Can you please add PT, OT, Speech therapists to the approved TeleHealth clinicians under CMS?
I am a PT with so many patients with Medicare coverage whom no longer are receiving PT care due to us not having the Telehealth opportunity to guide them through exercise progressions for their recovery especially those post surgical individuals!!
Adria B.
I urge CMS to link physical therapists as qualified digital providers of telehealth. Myself and other colleagues have been able to successfully treat ,via telehealth, many of our patients. Unfortunately, Medicare recipients aren’t able to receive care from a licensed Physical Therapist, due to the lack of action by CMS. Their decision or lack of decision only prolongs pain and suffering for our patients, burdens ER’s /physicians offices, and front lCOVIID 19 healthcare providers with MSK diagnoses,. In addition, this decision ultimately will increase costs as witnessed by large actuarial studies such as the Moran and Millikan studies.
Please act NOW to link PT’s as qualified digital healthcare providers.
Donna S.
Please update the Telehealth FAQs to indicate definitively whether to not providers can use audio only for Telehealth, or is the requirement still audio-visual technology? CMS is doing an excellent job!!!! Thank you!
Steve K.
Administrator Verma,
Please consider Physical, Occupational and Speech therapists as approved providers under telehealth for Medicare Part B beneficiaries. This is critical to our patients to keep them healthy and out of the hospitals and emergency departments.
Thank you.
Brian
Administrator Verma:
Along with many others who have already commented and on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries I urge you to add PT/OT/SLP to the list of eligible distant site providers. This crisis is the cause of many negative things, but does not also need to be a reason for the functional capabilities of Medicare beneficiaries to regress. PT/OT/SLP practitioners can provide a valuable and needed service via telehealth. Please act soon. Thank you for ALL you and the Administration are and have done thus far.