Moving closer to permanent telehealth reform | HIMSS 2026

Las Vegas - Hospitals and healthcare providers have celebrated a welcome win in Washington.

After a series of short-term measures, President Trump and Congress finally agreed to a two-year extension of telehealth programs last month. Federal approvals for telehealth programs will remain in place until the end of 2027. The White House and Congress also extended approval for hospital-at-home programs into 2030.

Kyle Zebley, the CEO of the American Telemedicine Association, talked about the impact of the victory in Washington during a conversation with Chief Healthcare Executive® at the HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition.

“I think we're definitely going to have permanency, and I think it's just a question of when,” Zebley says.

He says it’s conceivable that Washington will still look at a couple of other extensions before leaving telehealth approvals in place permanently.

“The federal government is a little dysfunctional, and I'm not breaking news in saying that, and they love to do things more in terms of short-term thinking and kick the can,” he says. “But I think at the end of the day, we are going to get some permanency for these programs that are in place now.”

For more than a year, Congress and Trump brokered short-term extensions of telehealth programs which were tied to bigger federal spending packages. During the government shutdown last fall, health systems running hospital-at-home programs couldn’t enroll new patients and had to discharge those at home or bring them into brick-and-mortar hospitals.

Now, a multi-year extension for telehealth programs and hospital-at-home programs offers some relief for health systems.

“It gives you some breathing room,” Zebley says. “The lack of panicked calls, the lack of total rippling anxiety through the organizations and the people that we work with is a clear change from what it's been over the last few months, given that horrible experience of the shutdown.”

• Read more: Envisioning home hospital programs as the future of health care

Telehealth providers welcomed the extension of approvals of virtual care programs, but Zebley says there has been a great deal of excitement about waivers for hospital-at-home programs being extended until Sept. 30, 2030.

Some health systems have been reluctant to build home hospital programs because they wanted to know the federal government was going to allow them for an extended period, Zebley says.

“We have heard a great deal of gratitude from the hospitals that we've been in contact with that are participating in the hospital-at-home program,” Zebley says. “The fact that we've got a five-year extension is really necessary. It's an expensive endeavor for these wraparound services and the technology necessary in order to successfully launch the acute hospital care at home program.”

Some health systems in the telemedicine association have indicated they plan to start new programs to deliver acute care at home, and Zebley says some organizations with home hospital programs are looking to expand them.

“If we couldn't get permanency, about the best we could get is a five-year extension of these programs,” Zebley says. “I think you're going to see a huge infusion, and we're hearing it already, of interest from hospitals to participate in the program, and a huge expansion of those programs that already exist.”

Health systems delivering acute care at home are meeting the needs of patients, while also giving hospitals the ability to care for more patients.

“We're expanding hospital bedroom and bed capacity and expanding the number of patients that can be cared for,” Zebley says. “And that's so necessary in the healthcare system, just about at capacity, that needs to have expanded access to care in this manner.”

The Trump administration recently launched the Rural Health Transformation Program, a five-year, $50 billion initiative aimed at improving care in rural communities. The program is offering assistance to every state, and federal officials cited telehealth as a strategy to expand access. State applications for aid repeatedly outlined plans to expand virtual care capabilities in rural areas.

Zebley says telehealth is an essential element to offer more healthcare services in rural America.

“We couldn't really have designed something that is more in keeping with our philosophy of using technology to improve outcomes and relieve pressure on an extremely burdened healthcare system, in general, and particularly, an overly burdened healthcare system with so much need, too few providers, too few hospitals,” Zebley says.