What's the news: For the next two years, Medicare patients and physicians will be able to use telehealth services knowing that they will be covered without interruption.
The recently passed government funding package—the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026—renewed the telehealth coverage that so many older adults have relied on since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, an extension that the AMA strongly supports and continues to advocate to make permanent. Find out how telehealth drives care improvement and saves money.
This is one of eight major wins for patients and physicians included in the latest federal budget deal. These victories didn’t happen by chance. They happened because the AMA fought for them, and they were only possible because the AMA brought the full strength of its advocacy to Capitol Hill. That powerful effort encompasses thousands of interactions with congressional offices, hundreds of letters and resources, congressional testimony and more, says the new “AMA Advocacy Impact Report.”
The AMA National Advocacy Conference, entering its second day and held in Washington, brings the power of organized medicine to the nation’s capital. The hundreds of physicians and medical society executives attending are hearing from members of Congress and the administration about federal efforts to improve health care, and advocating on crucial health care issues affecting physicians and patients.
Why this win matters: Although not a permanent solution, the two-year extension provides certainty that Medicare patients will have telehealth benefits covered during this window and physicians can be confident that they will be reimbursed for providing these services.
These are services that older adults and their physicians have come to rely on. Prior to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Medicare patients and physicians rarely used telehealth because of regulatory and payment barriers.
Congress and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) temporarily expanded telehealth access during the COVID-19 pandemic removed key barriers to telehealth, including those related to audio visits and billing. Once Medicare adopted the changes, other health plans quickly changed their programs to allow payment for telehealth. The benefits of expanding telehealth have been documented, including:
- More than 28 million Medicare beneficiaries using telehealth during the first year of the pandemic, particularly for behavioral health and primary care
- Telehealth comprising about 13% of all visits in health centers in rural parts of the nation where access to care can be a challenge, with community health centers delivering 18 million health visits in 2023.
- Patients, when adjusting for other factors, having 64% higher odds of completing a telehealth appointment compared to an in-person visits.
- Remote patient monitoring for maternity care resulting in, among other things, a 20% reduction in preterm births, 3 in-person visits saved per patient.
- A virtual chronic care management program with 1 million patients enrolled to manage conditions including prediabetes, diabetes, hypertension and musculoskeletal conditions between clinical visits resulting in 48% of patients with uncontrolled blood pressure at baseline making positive changes to improve their blood pressure category; among diabetes patients, there was a $1,300 cost savings for members at one year.
The AMA has laid out these statistics and more in its detailed issue brief, “The case for permanent telehealth policy and expanded access to virtual care” (PDF).
Multiple short-term extensions have allowed physicians to continue to care for Medicare patients through telehealth. However, uncertainty for physicians and patients bubbles up as each deadline looms.
In 2025, for example, there was a disruptive 43-day lapse in Medicare telehealth services during the government shutdown. While the two-year extension restores some certainty, the AMA continues to advocate for making the changes permanent.
AMA President Bobby Mukkamala, MD, has said that making telehealth flexibilities permanent is the right call and it is an idea that the AMA championed long before the pandemic.
“Telehealth improves continuity of care, reduces no-show rates and is particularly valuable to seniors, those struggling with mobility issues and patients living in underserved areas,” Dr. Mukkamala wrote in an AMA Leadership Viewpoints column. “Because the AMA recognizes that telehealth is a critical element of health care going forward, we continue to lead the charge to substantially expand telehealth policy, research and implementation to ensure physician practice sustainability. Payment for health care services should be fair and equitable regardless of the manner in which those services are performed.”
From AI implementation to digital health adoption and EHR usability, the AMA is fighting to make technology work for physicians, ensuring that it is an asset to doctors. That includes recently launching the AMA Center for Digital Health and AI to give physicians a powerful voice in shaping how AI and other digital tools are harnessed to improve the patient and clinician experience.
Learn more: The AMA supports bipartisan, bicameral legislation called The Creating Opportunities Now for Necessary and Effective Care Technologies (CONNECT) for Health Act of 2025—as well as the Telehealth Modernization Act of 2025—that would, among other things, permanently remove geographical restrictions for telehealth services.
The AMA sent a letter (PDF) to U.S. House of Representatives backing the CONNECT for Health Act and sent another letter (PDF) to Senate members supporting the Telehealth Modernization Act.
Visit AMA Advocacy in Action to find out what’s at stake in supporting telehealth and other advocacy priorities the AMA is actively working on.
