If Congress does not act by the end of the year, important telehealth flexibilities will expire when the Public Health Emergency ends, leaving thousands of patients without access to mental health and substance use disorder treatments.
The American Hospital Association (AHA), on behalf of its nearly 5,000 member hospitals and health systems, sent a letter urging the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to take immediate action to allow telemedicine prescribing of controlled substances before the Public Health Emergency (PHE) waivers expire. The letter exhorts the DEA to publish the proposed rule for a special telemedicine registration, something the DEA has said it would do since 2009 (yes, 13 years ago; not a typo).