CMS NEWS: Billing for Professional Telehealth Distant Site Services During the Public Health Emergency — Revised
This corrects a prior message that appeared in our March 31, 2020 Special Edition.
Building on prior action to expand reimbursement for telehealth services to Medicare beneficiaries, CMS will now allow for more than 80 additional services to be furnished via telehealth. When billing professional claims for all telehealth services with dates of services on or after March 1, 2020, and for the duration of the Public Health Emergency (PHE), bill with:
- Place of Service (POS) equal to what it would have been had the service been furnished in-person
- Modifier 95, indicating that the service rendered was actually performed via telehealth
As a reminder, CMS is not requiring the CR modifier on telehealth services. However, consistent with current rules for telehealth services, there are two scenarios where modifiers are required on Medicare telehealth professional claims:
- Furnished as part of a federal telemedicine demonstration project in Alaska and Hawaii using asynchronous (store and forward) technology, use GQ modifier
- Furnished for diagnosis and treatment of an acute stroke, use G0 modifier
There are no billing changes for institutional claims; critical access hospital method II claims should continue to bill with modifier GT.
