On March 17, Medicare chief Seema Verma stepped to the podium at a White House coronavirus briefing and unveiled a “historic action” to promote virtual medical care, or telehealth.
Verma temporarily lifted a variety of federal restrictions on the use of the service, which had been limited to rural areas. She praised telehealth, saying it could handle routine care for an older patient with diabetes without risking a visit to a medical office. She said a Medicare recipient with mild flu-like symptoms could receive advice from a doctor at home “instead of leaving the house and sitting in a waiting room full of other vulnerable people.”
