Are telehealth flexibilities here to stay?
During the pandemic, Medicare relaxed long-standing restrictions on telehealth: patients could receive care from home, geographic limitations were eased, and more providers could bill for virtual visits. For a while, the big question was: will this all vanish when the public health emergency ends?
By 2025, the answer looks clearer: telehealth isn’t going away—but the details matter. Congress and CMS have extended many flexibilities through at least late 2025, with some elements made effectively permanent, while debates continue over payment levels and long-term rules.
For digital health and virtual-first startups, that’s both an opportunity and a design challenge.
What exactly has CMS extended?
Key elements of the current landscape include:
- Extended coverage for telehealth visits from home
Medicare beneficiaries can receive many non-mental-health telehealth services from their home, regardless of rural status, through at least September 30, 2025, with additional extensions under discussion. - Expanded provider types
A broader set of practitioners can bill Medicare for telehealth, opening more specialties to virtual delivery. - Continued flexibility around audio-only visits in some cases
Particularly important for populations with limited broadband access.
These moves signal that virtual care is no longer a temporary exception; it’s a core part of the care delivery toolkit.
How does this change the calculus for telehealth and RPM startups?
Regulatory uncertainty has always made providers and investors cautious. With clearer timelines and extended flexibilities, organizations are more willing to:
- Invest in long-term telehealth infrastructure
- Embed virtual care into standard pathways
- Contract with virtual-first and hybrid care vendors
- Expand remote patient monitoring (RPM) programs tied to reimbursable codes
For startups, this means you can design for durable integration, not just stopgap solutions.
What should virtual care products focus on in this environment?
- Seamless hybrid workflows
The future isn’t all-virtual or all-physical; it’s hybrid. Your product should make it easy to schedule, document, and switch between virtual and in-person encounters without fragmentation. - Billing and documentation support
Providers care about whether a visit is billable, at what rate, and under which code. Building smart prompts and templates around documentation and coding can be a huge value-add. - Inclusion and access
Audio-only support, low-bandwidth modes, and accessibility features matter—especially for older adults and underserved groups. - Clinical quality signals
As telehealth moves from “novel” to “expected,” the focus will be on outcomes, not just convenience. Integrating vitals, validated assessments, and risk stratification will help prove value.
What risks or constraints should teams keep in mind?
Even as flexibilities extend, some uncertainties remain:
- Future Congresses could change reimbursement levels or geographic rules.
- Payer policies outside Medicare vary significantly.
- Oversight of virtual prescribing, especially for controlled substances, is tightening in some areas.
Designing for resilience—multiple revenue streams, multi-payer compatibility, and strong clinical governance—is as important as designing for user delight.
How can telehealth products position themselves for the long term?
The winning virtual care experiences will:
- Feel like a natural extension of standard care, not a parallel universe.
- Make clinicians’ lives easier, not harder.
- Offer clear ROI stories tied to access, outcomes, and efficiency.
- Anticipate evolving reimbursement and compliance requirements.
Telehealth’s future isn’t a question mark anymore; it’s a design brief. CMS has opened a durable window—now it’s up to innovators to build the right experiences through it.
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