The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has delayed The Joint Commission’s requirement to implement CMS telemedicine standards for both general and critical access hospitals until March 2011. Until receipt of this extension from CMS, Joint Commission accredited hospitals were expected to implement by July 15, 2010 new elements of performance to conform to Medicare’s credentialing and privileging requirement for telehealth services. Therefore, hospitals now do not need to make changes for the July 15, 2010 date as was previously communicated. The extension was granted by CMS because CMS has issued a new proposed regulation on telemedicine, which will ultimately affect Medicare’s credentialing and privileging standards, but this regulation will not be finalized until sometime in the future. The Joint Commission plans to comment on the proposed rule by the July 26 deadline and urges hospitals to do the same. Look for more information in an upcoming issue of The Joint Commission Perspectives.
As background on this issue, the required changes to the telemedicine standards were part of The Joint Commission’s application to CMS for continued hospital deeming authority. This required The Joint Commission to add specificity to its standards as a way to demonstrate equivalency with the Medicare hospital requirements. The changes made to the standards relating to credentialing and privileging by proxy were announced in September 2009. Since that time, The Joint Commission has engaged CMS and members of Congress regarding the issue of credentialing and privileging by proxy as it relates to telemedicine providers and users. The Joint Commission believes that there would be an adverse effect on the access to some telehealth services if organizations are not allowed to comply with the original Joint Commission requirements addressing credentialing and privileging by proxy. The Joint Commission also believed that the CMS requirements placed an undue burden on many organizations without improving the quality of services, provider accountability and the effectiveness of the credentialing and privileging processes or their accountability.
(Contact: Margaret VanAmringe, mvanamringe@jointcommission.org)