Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

14. Department of Health and Human Services · Minor

Increase rural telehealth access and interstate licensure

Partially done

488 14. Department of Health and Human Services

“Implement or encourage policies that increase the supply of health care providers, such as increased telehealth access and interstate licensure (a historically state matter), including for volunteers wishing to provide temporary, charitable services across state lines.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    CMS's CY 2026 Physician Fee Schedule final rule permanently removes the frequency limitations on Medicare telehealth services, permanently adopts a definition of direct supervision that allows real-time audio-video virtual supervision, and extends that definition to rural health clinics and federally qualified health centers - all of which increase the supply of practitioners who may furnish care remotely, including in rural areas. The interstate-licensure half of the Quote, including cross-border charitable volunteering, is a state matter and nothing in the window touches it.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Full-text check of govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-11-05/html/2025-19787.htm: 328 occurrences of “telehealth”, 59 of “Medicare Telehealth Services List”, 11 of “frequency limitations”; the operative passages read “permanently remove frequency limitations on furnishing these services via telehealth” and “permanently adopt a definition of `direct supervision’”, the latter extended to RHCs and FQHCs.
  • Federal Register full text “interstate licensure” since 2025-01-20: 0 documents. “licensure compact”: one document, an Education Department student-loan rule.
  • Among the 119th-Congress bills we keep and search, from congress.gov: nineteen telehealth bills. Only H.R. 3419 (telehealth network and resource-center grant reauthorization) has passed a chamber; it does not address licensure. The item is not flagged as needing an act of Congress, so the executive action governs the Status.
Action
expand
Object
rural telehealth access and interstate licensure
ID
1360