Medicare Finalizes Rule for Credentialing and Privileging of Telemedicine Services

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced that it has finalized a rule for telemedicine services to ensure that patients in rural or remote areas will continue to receive the most cutting-edge medical care from many of their local hospitals. The final rule aims to reduce the burden of the traditional credentialing and privileging process for Medicare-participating hospitals and CAHs, both those that provide telemedicine services and those that use such services. In particular, the rule extends the option of a streamlined credentialing and privileging process to those small hospitals and CAHs that use the telemedicine services of practitioners from distant-site telemedicine entities, both Medicare- and non-Medicare-participating, in order to improve access to specialty services for patients while further reducing the regulatory burden imposed on hospitals and CAHs. A hospital or CAH that furnishes telemedicine services to its patients via an agreement with a “distant” hospital or telemedicine entity may now rely upon information furnished by the distant hospital (often a larger medical center) or telemedicine entity when making credentialing and privileging decisions for the physicians and practitioners at the distant site that will furnish the services. More information is available on the CMS Website - click here.