ACOG Works to Make Telehealth Expansions Permanent

As part of our ongoing telehealth advocacy campaign, Eva Chalas, MD, FACOG, FACS, ACOG President, released a statement this week urging all health plans to permanently expand telehealth coverage and payment policies. We have heard from our members that you want to see many of the COVID-19 telehealth coverage and payment improvements maintained in the months and years to come, so we are working with private insurers, states, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to achieve positive policy changes.

For example, ACOG wrote to several major health insurers urging them to cover telehealth services for all their enrollees and implement payment parity for telehealth evaluation and management visits, including audio-only and audio-video visits. Additionally, ACOG is partnering with our Section leaders to improve access to telehealth and remote patient monitoring services for pregnant and postpartum women. Telehealth visits with in-network obstetrician-gynecologists should be considered a standard benefit for all patients, and health plans must maintain the progress made during this public health crisis to make telehealth more widely available, not just in times of national emergency.

If you have telehealth billing questions or concerns with a health plan’s telehealth policy, you can now submit a ticket to ACOG’s free Coding Ticket Database. The Coding Ticket Database is a comprehensive practice management tool for members and their staff, where you can get your coding and policy questions answered and find resources on telehealth billing. The tickets you submit will help inform our advocacy efforts and improve our member resources!