Insurance and tele-therapy: how likely is this?

May 5, 2022 2:57 PM

I'm starting to hear people in various forums talk about how insurance companies may stop paying for telehealth psychotherapy. This would do away with most of my budding practice, but also, on a non-me-related scale, it would immediately destroy what, I gather, would be a pretty large number of therapeutic relationships. Does anyone with any insider-y knowledge of health insurance know how likely this is?
posted by less-of-course to Health & Fitness (4 answers total)

Best answer: This report (scroll down to page 10) shows that 43 states have laws that cover private payers reimbursing for telehealth. In some states this is a full parity requirement - you would need to look up your state to know the relevant details. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid has permanently expanded coverage for telehealth with patients from their own homes. So, overall (with exceptions) the trend will be to continue to support telehealth although there be variations from state to state and from insurance plan to plan.

The other thing that may happen is that some insurance companies may end up requiring patients to use a specific platform or network for telehealth - often ones that have negotiated significant lower rates to the providers in their network. I don't know if any central information on that but if you work with just a few insurance companies, it would be worth some research to find out their specific requirements.
posted by metahawk at 3:21 PM on May 5, 2022 [3 favorites]

My wife’s practice has been saying that they’ll move back to an in-office model with limited telehealth “any week now”. They’ve been saying this for over a year and a half. I got tired of hearing this and looked it up, and found mostly the same info as above. If you’re in private practice, you should be ok, but if you work for a larger practice, there might be corporate policies that restrict it.
posted by kevinbelt at 5:56 PM on May 5, 2022

I do credentialing for mental health providers who are opening private practices in North Carolina. Several insurance companies have added questions on their application forms about whether the provider offers telehealth. CAQH (which covers more than telehealth) has added a question about telehealth as well. I don't know what it means for the long-term future but at least for the present and near future it seems insurers are anticipating that telehealth therapy will be offered.
posted by tuesdayschild at 9:47 AM on May 6, 2022

Center for Connected Health Policy
posted by flamk at 1:57 PM on May 8, 2022