CMS Issues Final Telemedicine Rule, Eases Burdens on Credentialing and Privileging - May 11, 2011

The federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on May 2 issued a final rule on the provision of telemedicine services. The final rule revises the procedure for credentialing and privileging of providers of telemedicine. Specifically, it allows a remote hospital or critical-access hospital (CAH) that arranges for telemedicine services with a distant site to rely on that distant site’s information when making credentialing and privileging decisions, provided that the hospital or CAH have an agreement in place with the distant site and that the distant site meets other CMS requirements. In the initial proposed rule, hospitals and CAHs that arrange for telemedicine would have been required to independently research the practitioner’s credentials. Allowing hospitals and CAHs to use information from the distant sites will save resources and speed the credentialing and privileging process, easing the burden on both the provider and recipient of telemedicine services.