CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCES

(October 16 – 22, 2020)

* * * *

CMS Expands Telehealth Services List During Public Health Emergency

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (“CMS”) added 11 new services to the Medicare telehealth services list.  Effective immediately, CMS will begin paying eligible practitioners who furnish these services for the duration of the public health emergency.  Among others, the new telehealth services will include certain neurostimulator analysis and programming services, as well as cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation services.  To view the list of newly added services, click here.
_

CMS Announces Change to Medicare Payments for COVID-19 Test Results

In an effort to ensure patients who test positive for COVID-19 are alerted quickly, CMS changed Medicare payments to laboratories for COVID-19 diagnostic tests to incentivize faster results.  Starting January 1, 2021, Medicare will pay $100 only to those laboratories that complete high throughput COVID-19 diagnostic tests within two calendar days or less of the specimen being collected.  For laboratories that take longer than two days to complete these tests, Medicare will pay a rate of $75.  For more information, click here.