While the delivery of health care through telehealth has been technically feasible for years, it was generally limping along until the COVID-19 public health emergency.
Before the pandemic, telehealth was hamstrung by a patchwork of burdensome federal and state licensure and reimbursement limitations, resulting in a fragmented virtual care delivery system. However, the public health emergency necessitated a drastic and rapid adoption of telehealth across the country. To enable this, federal and state regulators were forced to issue a myriad of licensure, reimbursement, privacy and security waivers to lift the regulatory morass and enable the widespread delivery of care through telehealth that was critically important during the pandemic.