Telehealth on hold: Bad effects on rural health

Telemedicine payment flexibilities for Medicare included allowances that benefited Federally Qualified Health Centers and Rural Health Clinics. Like other elements, those expired after Sept. 30, 2025. Kyle Zebley, senior vice president, public policy of the American Telemedicine Association, and executive director of ATA Action, its advocacy affiliate, discusses why those are vital for rural health care.

Medical Economics: One of the flexibilities that I wanted to ask about involves allowing Rural Health Clinics and Federally Qualified Health Centers to serve as distant sites for telehealth. How important is that for rural health care?

Kyle Zebley: It's extraordinarily important. We are very supportive of our Federally Qualified Health Centers, Rural Health Clinics being able to cover and get reimbursed for telehealth services. By its very design and nature, FQHCs and RHCs are on the front lines, physically and rhetorically, in terms of the delivering of services to underserved communities that are oftentimes isolated from other areas of care access. So they're a fundamental, important, critical part of our health care system, and they have benefited from these Medicare telehealth flexibilities. And of course, as much as possible, wherever possible, we need to make sure that various flexibilities are being used to the max in order to maintain as much access to care as possible. So insofar as they would be used as distance site clinics, so that it would suffice for geographic and originating site needs and requirements during, in particular, this period of the overall lapse, it's absolutely critical and fundamental that we do all we can to support that being the case and being maintained moving forward for however long the duration of this lapse is.