Page 7 State Telehealth Laws and Reimbursement Policies A Comprehensive Scan of the 50 States and District of Columbia

• Indiana • Mississippi • Vermont
• Kansas • New York • Washington
• Louisiana • Texas
• Minnesota • Utah

In addition to state Medicaid programs, a few states offer RPM reimbursement through their Department
of Aging Services. These states include:

• Pennsylvania
• South Carolina
• South Dakota

Note that the states listed are only for RPM in the home where some specific information related to
technology or telecommunication could be found. Some states reimburse for home health services, but
no further details of what modality was reimbursed could be located. Additionally, some states may
already be reimbursing for tele-ICU (a form of RPM); however, these were not included.

Email/Phone/Fax
Email, telephone, and fax are rarely acceptable forms of delivery unless they are in conjunction with some
other type of system. States either are silent or explicitly exclude these forms, sometimes even within the
definition of telehealth and/or telemedicine.

Transmission/Facility Fee
Twenty-six states will reimburse either a transmission, facility fee, or both. Medicare also reimburses for a
facility fee for the originating site provider.
Location of Service
A few states have adopted the Medicare policy in which reimbursable services are restricted to those
provided in rural or underserved areas, or there are unusual requirements in order to ensure there is
some distance between the patient and distant site provider. For example, Idaho’s Medicaid patients must
be located in a rural or underserved area to be eligible. In South Dakota’s Medicaid program, an
originating and distant site cannot be located in the same community. However, the majority of states do
not have these geographical restrictions, and some states that previously had such a restriction (for
example, Nevada and Missouri), removed the policy in the last year.

A more common practice is for state Medicaid programs to limit the type of facility that may be an
originating or distant site, often excluding the home as a reimbursable site, impacting RPM as a result.
Some state Medicaid programs also require a licensed in-state provider to be physically located within the
state in order to enroll as a Medicaid provider.

Consent
Twenty-seven states include some sort of informed consent requirement in their statutes, administrative
code, and/or Medicaid policies. This requirement can sometimes apply to the Medicaid program, a
specific specialty or all telehealth encounters that occur in the state, depending on how and where the
policy is written. States with informed consent policies include:

• Alabama • California • Florida
• Arizona • Colorado • Georgia