Healthcare IT News reported that the AMA and various medical groups are opposed to making telehealth waivers permanent in their current form. In a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma, scores of medical associations called on the agency to sunset waivers related to scope of practice and licensure once the pandemic has subsided.

Lots of industry groups want to see the temporary government waivers enacted early on during the COVID-19 public health emergency – the ones enabling the vast expansion of telehealth and remote patient monitoring over the past four months – to be made permanent once the storm has subsided. And some legislators do too.

More than 100 physician groups, led by the AMA, told the CMS in no uncertain terms this past week that, while they supported temporary regulatory relaxations in response to COVID-19, they were strongly opposed to certain rules changes being made permanent.

“These temporary waivers, in extraordinary circumstances, have empowered physicians and non-physician health care professionals to focus on their patients and prevented a collapse of the health care system in the hardest hit areas of the country,” the groups wrote to CMS Administrator Seema Verma.

The letter to CMS does not mention telehealth. But issues related to licensure and scope of practice have for years been atop the list of regulatory hurdles to wider telehealth adoption.

Back in April, CMS hit pause on several existing regulations to better enable providers to shore up frontline medical staff, virtually and in-person, during the pandemic. It reduced certification requirements for clinicians to expand workforce flexibilities and sought to allow care practitioners to be hired more quickly and “perform work to the fullest extent of their licenses.”

Giving the approval for remotely located physicians to work with nurse practitioners at rural facilities would offer a more robust healthcare workforce during the pandemic, said CMS officials. The agency facilities, and occupational therapists to perform initial assessments on certain homebound patients.

CMS should postpone any efforts to make these waivers permanent until after the conclusion of the public health emergency (PHE) and pursue such permanent waivers through notice-and-comment rulemaking.

We agree that at the conclusion of the PHE, CMS should allow for comments from providers and healthcare industry leaders. This will all CMS to decide based on evidence and what is best for the care of patients.