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Trending in Telehealth: April 2025

Trending in Telehealth highlights monthly state legislative and regulatory developments that impact the healthcare providers, telehealth and digital health companies, pharmacists and technology companies that deliver and facilitate the delivery of virtual care.

Trending in April:

• Teledentistry
• Prescription and drug dispensing and monitoring
• Remote monitoring

A CLOSER LOOK

Proposed Legislation & Rulemaking:

  • Georgia HB 567, which would authorize and regulate teledentistry, successfully passed both chambers of the legislature. The bill specifies that a dentist must have a physical office in the state, maintain relationships with in-person referral dentists, and ensure that teledentistry services adhere to existing standards for patient care, including privacy and consent requirements.
  • Arkansas HB 1429 would allow interpreting physicians to be available via telecommunication instead of requiring their physical presence onsite for diagnostic mammography procedures. The bill has cleared the House and the Senate.
  • Hawaii HB 302 received approval from both the House and the Senate. The bill would repeal the requirement for an in-person provider-patient relationship and permit applicants or primary caregivers to temporarily purchase medical cannabis after submitting the applicant’s certification form.
  • Passing in a second chamber, Indiana SB 473 would enable prescription of agonist opioids through telehealth services, without an in-person visit, for the treatment or management of opioid dependence.
  • Arizona SB 1335, which would mandate the director of the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System to provide an annual report on teledentistry, passed in a second chamber.
  • Montana HB 806 passed in a second chamber. The bill would revise laws related to nutritionists and dietitians, including incorporating the provision of services via telehealth into the definition of “practice of nutrition.”

Finalized Legislation & Rulemaking Activity:

  • Indiana HB 1572 was signed into law and goes into effect July 1, 2025. This law adds speech-language pathology assistants to the definition of “practitioner” for telehealth purposes, specifies services included in “audiology,” and allows the sale and use of over-the-counter hearing aids without fitting by a registered hearing aid dealer or licensed audiologist.
  • North Dakota’s SB 2353 was signed into law and goes into effect on August 1, 2025. It allows certified community behavioral health clinics to provide telemedicine consultations for mental health and substance use disorder treatments.
  • Expanding telehealth services, Virginia SB 1367 was signed into law and goes into effect July 1, 2025. This law allows remote patient monitoring for pregnant and postpartum individuals, ensuring broader access to telehealth monitoring beyond high-risk pregnancies.
  • Wyoming adopted regulation 7211 as an emergency rule on April 3, 2025. The rule enhances telehealth services within the state by allowing healthcare providers licensed in other states to offer telehealth services to patients in Wyoming without needing a Wyoming license, provided they notify the appropriate licensing board and meet certain conditions.
  • Ohio’s SB 95 went into effect on April [...]

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Trending in Telehealth: July 9 – 15, 2024

Trending in Telehealth highlights state legislative and regulatory developments that impact the healthcare providers, telehealth and digital health companies, pharmacists and technology companies that deliver and facilitate the delivery of virtual care.

Trending in the past week:

  • Insurance and Medicaid reimbursement
  • Speech-language pathology and audiology
  • School-based health services

A CLOSER LOOK

Finalized Legislation & Rulemaking:

  • Florida finalized a rule updating the disciplinary guidelines for the Florida Board of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology to describe potential disciplinary actions for certain violations by out-of-state telehealth registrants.
  • In Pennsylvania, Senate Bill 74, which was enacted on April 18, 2024, became effective as of July 15, 2024. The bill requires Medicaid coverage for maternity services and health insurance coverage for telehealth and in-home program services for pregnant and postpartum women.

Legislation & Rulemaking Activity in Proposal Phase:

Highlights:

  • Oregon issued a proposed rule that would update school-based health services to add services and health plans approved by Oregon’s Medicaid State Plan Amendment, including telehealth.

Why it matters:

  • States are increasing access to and coverage for telemedicine services. Pennsylvania expanded access to and coverage of telehealth services for pregnant and postpartum women seeking maternity services. Additionally, Oregon is considering a rule to expand telehealth coverage for school-based health services.
  • Legislation is slowing down for the summer. As typical during the mid to late summer, legislative activity has slowed down across the board, including as related to telehealth.

Telehealth is an important development in care delivery, but the regulatory patchwork is complicated. The McDermott Digital Health team works alongside the industry’s leading providers, payors and technology innovators to help them enter new markets, break down barriers to delivering accessible care and mitigate enforcement risk through proactive compliance.




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Trending in Telehealth: February 20 – 26, 2023

Trending in Telehealth is a new series from the McDermott Digital Health team in which we highlight state legislative and regulatory developments that impact the healthcare providers, telehealth and digital health companies, pharmacists, and technology companies that deliver and facilitate the delivery of virtual care.

Trending in the past week:

  • Interstate Compacts
  • Audiology and Speech Pathologists
  • Prescribing
  • Health Practitioner Licensing
  • Behavioral Health

A CLOSER LOOK

Finalized Legislation & Rulemaking: 7

  • Wyoming has signed into law a bill to join the Interstate Compact for Licensed Professional Counselors.
  • Virginia has had significant activity over the past week:
    • The state has enrolled the Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology Interstate Compact (HB 2033). The bill will become law if signed by the governor or if the governor does not act within 30 days of the date of adjournment under the terms of the state constitution.
    • Virginia has also enrolled a bill (HB 2374) prohibiting pharmacies and pharmacists from refusing to fulfill prescriptions based solely on the fact that the prescriber used a telemedicine platform to provide services.
    • In addition, the state’s legislators have enrolled another bill (HB 1754) that modifies telemedicine exceptions for out-of-state doctors of medicine or osteopathy, physician assistants, respiratory therapists, occupational therapists or nurse practitioners. Specifically, under HB 1754, if such a practitioner with whom the patient has previously established a practitioner-patient relationship is unavailable when the patient seeks continuity of care, another practitioner of the same subspecialty at the same group practice with access to the patient’s treatment history may provide continuity of care using telemedicine services until the practitioner with whom the patient has a previously established relationship becomes available.
  • Texas has adopted rules to implement Code § 531.02161(b)(4), which requires Texas Health and Human Services to ensure that, if cost effective, clinically effective and allowed by federal law, a Medicaid recipient has the option to receive certain services, including occupational therapy, physical therapy and speech-language pathology, as a telehealth service. The adopted rules require initial eligibility and personal assistant services assessments to be completed in person unless certain conditions exist, in which case the assessment may be completed by telehealth, telephone or video conferencing.
  • In Washington, the two final rules concerning telehealth addressed in detail in last week’s post have gone into effect.

Legislation & Rulemaking Activity in Proposal Phase: 40

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Trending in Telehealth: February 13 – 19, 2023

Trending in Telehealth is a series from the McDermott Digital Health team where we highlight state legislative and regulatory developments that impact the healthcare providers, telehealth and digital health companies, pharmacists, and technology companies that deliver and facilitate the delivery of virtual care.

Trending in the past week:

  • Interstate Compacts
  • Audiology and Speech Pathologists
  • Behavioral Health
  • E-Prescribing

A closer look:

Finalized Legislation & Rulemaking: 5

  • Wyoming has officially adopted the Psychology Interjurisdictional Compact (PSYPACT).
  • South Dakota has passed legislation that amends 36-37-7, which states that any person who is licensed pursuant to this chapter may provide speech-language pathology services via telehealth. Services delivered via telehealth must be equivalent to the quality of services delivered face-to-face. For the purposes of this section, the term, telehealth, has the meaning provided in § 34-52-1. The legislation also amends § 36-37-1 and removes the definition for “telepractice.”
  • Washington passed two final rules concerning telehealth:
    • WSR 23-04-048: This final rule promulgates regulations to align with recently passed legislation that, among other items, touches on consent when audio-only is used and store-and-forward services. The agency revised this part of the regulations to clarify that the patient consent to billing requirement applies to audio-only telemedicine services.
    • WSR 23-04-052: This final rule consolidates the telehealth sections into one and makes a technical correction on the use of telehealth for speech language pathology. Specifically, “speech language pathology services by telemedicine when not available in person” will be removed. This was added in a rule making during the public health emergency in error. The consolidated telemedicine rules apply to all programs and will reside in new WAC 182-501-0300.
  • Ohio passed a final rule concerning Medicaid reimbursement. The rule permits the use of Intensive home-based treatment (IHBT) via telehealth in accordance with rule 5122-29-31 of the Administrative Code.

Legislation & Rulemaking in Proposal Phase: 36

Highlights:

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