UnitedHealthcare Adds Telehealth Coverage to Therapy Services
On March 26, 2020, at 11:00pm CDT, Unitedhealthcare (UHC) posted the following announcement on their website:
UnitedHealthcare will reimburse physical, occupational and speech therapy telehealth services provided by qualified health care professionals when rendered using interactive audio/video technology. State laws and regulations apply. Benefits will be processed in accordance with the member’s plan.
This change is effective immediately for dates of service March 18 through June 18, 2020. In addition, it’s my interpretation that Cigna is only paying for telehealth services for physical, occupational and speech therapy submitted on a 1500-claim form by a private practice. Institutional providers (i.e. rehab agencies and hospital outpatient departments) should contact UnitedHealthcare regarding telehealth coverage for physical, occupational and speech therapy services.
Reimbursable codes are limited to the specific set of physical, occupational and speech therapy codes listed HERE. UnitedHealthcare will reimburse eligible codes when submitted with a place of service code 02 and modifier 95.
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Thank you for providing timely and concise information throughout this crisis… much appreciated!
Thank you!!
Rick, thank you so much for all of these updates. As you know, this is changing we feel like by the minute or second. We are very appreciative of all of your efforts here in providing this information to us as we are implementing this and want to be in Compliance with with what we are doing. Hopefully this will get better soon but in the meantime, you are helping us out tremendously as we try to keep up with this.
Thank you for the kind words and for taking the time to send me this comment.
Are they following Medicare’s advisement to loosen HIPAA in order to provide via Skype or FaceTime as the examples provided?
Please read their website and address any questions you have with UHC.
Are the Telehealth services only covered if provided by a Physical Therapist or are they covering Physical Therapists Assistants?
You first need to check your respective state practice act on whether a PTA or OTA to see if they are allowed to provide telehealth services. If the answer is yes, you then need to check with each insurance carrier and do they allow a PTA or OTA to provide telehealth services. They must also yes.