The 2026 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule boosts virtual care in hospitals and skilled nursing facilities, but complicates reimbursement for providers using telehealth from alternate sites, like their homes.
The beginning of November brings a mixed bag of news for healthcare leaders on the telehealth front.
The final version of the 2026 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule offers some good news on virtual care delivered in hospitals and skilled nursing facilities. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has eliminated frequency limits on telehealth services and will allow virtual direct supervision of those services in most cases where supervision is necessary. As well, CMS will continue its policy to all teaching physicians to virtually supervise residents in al l programs, not just rural ones.
On the opposite side of the ledger, CMS won’t continue the policy of allowing providers to report and bill for telehealth services using their currently enrolled practice location, even when they’re connecting with patients from their homes during nights and weekends. That allowance, in place the last five years, will end at the end of the year.
[Also read: Health Systems Press CMS to Let Doctors Use Telehealth at Home.]
That decision doesn’t sit well with the Alliance for Connected Care, which anticipates a sharp drop-off in telehealth services by providers in alternate locations.
“This policy helped reduce administrative complexity in Medicare billing and strengthened continuity of care by allowing patients to continue seeing their existing practitioners,” the alliance said in a statement.
By ending that allowance, it said, “those who continue providing such care would need to separately enroll and bill for each location from which they deliver telehealth services. This is administratively difficult and will dramatically increase regulatory burden on both these practitioners and organizations with payment systems that are not designed to accommodate this reality.”
The alliance also noted that a survey of its members estimates that this change will add 40 times the number of billing addresses tracked and reported to CMS by healthcare organizations, resulting in more than $1 million in additional operational costs for providers and significant costs to CMS to process that extra data.
“The Alliance shares CMS Administrator Oz's vision for reducing administrative burden and empowering clinicians to focus on what matters most – caring for the patients they serve,” the statement concluded. “We strongly support efforts to streamline regulations, simplify documentation requirements, and modernize federal policies that no longer reflect how care is delivered in today’s connected environment. This change is the antithesis of that vision and should be immediately corrected through sub-regulatory guidance.”
Eric Wicklund is the senior editor for technology at HealthLeaders.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The final 2026 CMS Physician Fee Schedule eliminates frequency limits on telehealth services inside hospitals and skilled nursing facilities and allows for remote supervision and training.
However, CMS is eliminating a five-year-old policy that allowed providers to report and bill for remote services using their practice location, a move that could prompt doctors to avoid treating patients during nights and weekends.