American College of Emergency Physicians
ACEP Telehealth Section Winter Newsletter
Table of Contents:
- Letter from the Chair
- Telehealth Section Policy Update
- Spotlight Event: Cornell University’s Virtual Healthcare in the Mainstream Symposium & Research Forum: Preparing Clinicians for the Digital Future of Care
- Literature in Emergency Telehealth: Key Advances and Practice Implications
- Upcoming Events
- Pertinent Links
Letter from the Chair
Dear ACEP Emergency Telehealth Section Members,
I hope this message finds you well and energized for another fantastic year ahead. Our section has been busy, and I’m excited to share several important updates that highlight the growth, engagement, and innovation happening across our community.
At the ACEP Scientific Assembly in Salt Lake City, we had the opportunity to meet many ACEP members who are actively integrating telehealth into their emergency medicine practice. It was inspiring to hear how clinicians across the country are using virtual care to expand access, improve efficiency, and enhance patient outcomes. Our section meeting featured an excellent discussion led by Dr. Judd Hollander on the future of telehealth, which was an engaging and forward-looking conversation that underscored both the opportunities and the challenges ahead.
We also hosted an informational table during the ACEP Section Crawl, where we connected with members interested in advocacy, education, and networking around telehealth. These conversations reinforced the value of our section as a hub for collaboration and shared expertise.
Looking ahead, our vice-chair, Dr. Marc Bartman, has organized a series of educational sessions with dedicated Q&A opportunities for the coming year. These sessions will take place on the second Tuesday of the month at 2:00 PM Eastern Time, and all section members are welcome and encouraged to attend. We hope to have these take place every other month. They will be a great venue to learn, exchange ideas, and stay current on emerging telehealth topics. If you are interested in being featured at an upcoming section meeting, please reach out to Marc Bartman, Ryan McBride, or myself.
Our section is also actively collaborating with ACEP committees—including the Health Information Technology (HIT) Committee and the Education Committee—to provide input on ACEP policy and future educational offerings. This work ensures that the telehealth perspective is represented in ACEP’s broader strategic efforts and that our members’ expertise helps shape the future of emergency care delivery. I invite you to join us at our next ACEP Telehealth Section meeting or visit our page on the ACEP website to learn more about our initiatives and to view recordings of past section events. Your engagement strengthens our community and helps drive meaningful progress in telehealth across emergency medicine.
Thank you for your continued commitment to advancing virtual care. I look forward to working with all of you in the year ahead.
Warm regards,
Michael Baker, MD, FACEP
Chair, ACEP Emergency Telehealth Section
Telehealth Section Policy Update
Ryan McBride, MPP
ACEP Staff Liaison to Telehealth Section
Congressional Affairs Director, Department of Advocacy & Practice Affairs
Policymaking is often a messy process, but to qualify the last few months in Washington, D.C., as “tumultuous” would undersell it a bit, and unfortunately the federal telehealth policy landscape has been similarly rocky as a result. As you likely know – or experienced firsthand – in October 2025, Congress was unable to reach a funding agreement on fiscal year (FY) 2026 appropriations, leading to the longest federal government shutdown in history. As extensions of the pandemic-era telehealth flexibilities had recently been tied to the previous short-term “continuing resolutions” (CRs) to fund the federal government, when the CR expired on September 30, 2025, so did the statutory telehealth flexibilities that patients and physicians had enjoyed for nearly five years.
The good news is that the federal telehealth policy landscape finally looks to be headed toward some much-needed stability and certainty. But seemingly as with all things in Congress these days, that news comes with a load-bearing asterisk. More on that below.
A lack of long-term certainty for telehealth has been and remains a key challenge on Capitol Hill. Since the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE), Congress has provided waivers to allow Medicare patients in every geographic area (not just rural areas) to receive telehealth services, and to receive telehealth services in their homes instead of being required to go to a medical facility to receive telehealth from a distant site. Even with the expiration of the PHE, Congress continued to extend the waivers and the sentiment among federal legislators and policymakers has been “telehealth is here to stay.” However, concerns about data, costs, and potential fraud, waste, or abuse, continue to be a barrier toward establishing telehealth permanency at the federal level.
At the end of 2024, a bipartisan, bicameral health care package came together and among its many provisions was a two-year extension of the telehealth flexibilities, as well as a five-year extension of the Acute Hospital-at-Home (HaH) program. The package was on track to pass, riding along with the year-end funding bill until President-elect Trump and Elon Musk leveled criticism at the deal, ultimately sinking the funding deal and health package in just a few short hours. Since then, ACEP and other stakeholders have continued working to try to resuscitate the health care package and provide some longer-term stability for our priorities like the telehealth waivers. A lot of work occurred throughout 2025 though there never appeared to be a great deal of momentum needed to dislodge the effort.
In January 2026, in a somewhat surprising development, committee leaders were able to reach an agreement and repackage much of the 2024 bill, including the two-year telehealth extension and five-year HaH reauthorization. The health package was included alongside a “minibus” slate of six appropriations bills, including the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services (Labor/HHS) appropriations, and all had been expected to pass relatively easily in the Senate during the last week of January after the House of Representatives cleared it in a 341-88 vote the week prior. However, after the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on January 24 by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents, Senate Democrats came out in unanimous opposition to the inclusion of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill in the package. The procedural vote in the Senate to advance consideration of the bill failed, sending Senate leadership scrambling to salvage the remaining 5 bills and peel off the DHS funding issue. Though the Senate was able to reach a compromise and pass this new deal technically before the funding deadline on Friday, January 30, the effort had to go back to the House of Representatives which was out of session until Monday, February 2. Yet again, the federal government found itself in a (partial) shutdown. The expiration of the CR on January 30 meant that the COVID-19-era Medicare telehealth waivers for originating site and geographic requirements, among others, also technically expired. Fortunately, on the afternoon of Tuesday, February 3, the House was able to successfully clear the package and end the shutdown.
With this chaotic but brief hiccup now behind us, we have two years of welcome certainty through extensions of these important Medicare telehealth flexibilities – allowing us more time and space to continue to advocate for permanency. We will keep you informed and involved along the way as these efforts take shape.
Spotlight Event
Cornell University’s Virtual Healthcare in the Mainstream Symposium & Research Forum: Preparing Clinicians for the Digital Future of Care
Beth Chun
Marketing Manager, Department of Emergency Medicine at Cornell University
Junnaid Razzak MD
Newsletter Co-Editor, Telehealth Section
Virtual care has become a fundamental element of modern healthcare delivery that requires thoughtful integration, continuous evaluation and a workforce trained not only to use digital tools, but to use them well. As virtual care continues its move into the mainstream, the question facing clinicians and health systems is how to prepare providers to deliver high quality, patient centered care across hybrid environments.
“Virtual care is transforming how we deliver healthcare,” says Dr. Rahul Sharma, Barbara and Stephen Friedman Professor and Chair of Emergency Medicine and Executive Director of the Center for Virtual Care at Weill Cornell Medicine. “Our responsibility is to ensure clinicians have the skills, confidence, and clinical grounding to provide exceptional care in any environment, whether at the bedside or through the screen.”
This philosophy has guided the Center’s work to thoughtfully shape how technology enhances care quality, safety, access and equity. Our annual Virtual Healthcare in the Mainstream Symposium & Research Forum was created out of this same intention: to bring clinicians, digital health leaders, educators, and policymakers together to examine what effective virtual care truly requires. Over the years, the conference has evolved into a forum for candid discussions about building sustainable hybrid models, integrating emerging technologies like AI and measuring the outcomes that matter to patients.
Education remains our Center for Virtual Care's most important investment in the future. From
foundational courses for medical students to telemedicine training in graduate medical education and advanced electives in digital health, each curriculum is designed around practical competencies: communication, remote examination techniques, digital professionalism, risk reduction, and the integration of virtual tools into real clinical workflows. The goal is not to teach technology for its own sake but to cultivate clinicians who can deliver thoughtful, safe, and equitable care in new contexts.
The future of care will be hybrid—virtual where effective, in person where essential, and seamlessly integrated between the two. Preparing clinicians for that future requires more than familiarity with tools. It demands a mindset oriented toward adaptability, empathy and continuous improvement. As Dr. Sharma notes, “The goal isn’t simply to keep pace with change, but to lead with intention, ensuring virtual care strengthens the human connection at the heart of medicine.
Literature in Emergency Telehealth: Key Advances and Practice Implications
Junnaid Razzak MD
Newsletter Co-Editor, Telehealth Section
Recent publications highlight the accelerating integration of telehealth across emergency care, with implications for triage, critical care access, and post-discharge continuity. Several themes emerge:
Optimizing ED Disposition and Resource Use
Telemedicine-based triage for complicated mild traumatic brain injury (Yazdanian et al.) and tele-hospitalist collaboration with community EDs (Koch et al.) demonstrate strategies to reduce unnecessary transfers and boarding. Similarly, virtual observation units for older adults with falls (Li et al.) offer a safe alternative to inpatient admission, addressing capacity constraints while maintaining quality.
Expanding Specialty Access
Emergency tele-neurosurgery consults (Wetzel et al.) and tele-psychiatry assessments (Cook et al.) illustrate how remote expertise can accelerate decision-making and improve care equity. These models are particularly relevant for rural EDs and during surge periods.
Prehospital and Post-Discharge Integration
Virtual triage integrated with EMS (Young-Jamieson et al.) and AI-enhanced tele-ECG for chest pain (Accorsi et al.) show how telehealth can compress time-to-treatment for time-sensitive conditions. Post-discharge telehealth visits for older adults (Kahl et al.) reduce revisit risk and strengthen transitions of care, supporting ED efforts to improve outcomes beyond the hospital walls.
Scaling and Standardization
Programmatic guidance for scaling acute care telemedicine (Fang et al.) and best-practice guidelines for virtual assessment (Brownie et al.) underscore the need for robust governance, interoperability, and clinician training. These frameworks help U.S. EDs move from pilot projects to sustainable, system-wide telehealth integration.
Future Directions
Emerging applications—such as AI-assisted stroke robotics and remote monitoring—signal a shift toward precision telehealth, where technology augments clinical judgment and operational efficiency. For emergency physicians, these innovations offer tools to improve throughput, expand access, and enhance patient safety in an increasingly resource-constrained environment.
Upcoming Events
ACEP Telehealth Section Meeting
Occurs the second Tuesday of every month from 2:00pm-3:00pm EST
February 10, 2026
AI Panel: The Role of Artificial Intelligence in the Evolution of Emergency Care
- Therese L. Canares, MD, MBA
- Brock Daniels MD, MPH, MAS
- Professor Peter A. D. Steel, MA, MBBS, FACEP
