Mark González

Existing law establishes the Medi-Cal program, which is administered by the State Department of Health Care Services, under which qualified low-income individuals receive health care services. The Medi-Cal program is, in part, governed and funded by federal Medicaid program provisions.

Under existing law, in-person, face-to-face contact is not required under the Medi-Cal program when covered health care services are provided by video synchronous interaction, asynchronous store and forward, audio-only synchronous interaction, remote patient monitoring, or other permissible virtual communication modalities, when those services and settings meet certain criteria.

Existing law required the department, on or before January 1, 2023, to develop a research and evaluation plan that, among other things, proposes strategies to analyze the relationship between telehealth and access to care, quality of care, and Medi-Cal program costs, utilization, and program integrity. The department created that plan in December of 2022 and published the Biennial Telehealth Utilization Report in April of 2024.

This bill, the Telehealth for All Act of 2025, would require the department, commencing in 2028 and every 2 years thereafter, to use Medi-Cal data and other data sources available to the department to produce analyses in a publicly available Medi-Cal telehealth utilization report. The bill would authorize the department to include those analyses in each of the department's Biennial Telehealth Utilization Reports, as specified.

The bill would require the analyses to address telehealth access and utilization data, including various metrics on telehealth visits and claims, disaggregated by geographic, demographic, and social determinants of health categories to identify disparities. The bill would require the department to identify additional data elements for inclusion in future reports to help to identify and address access-to-care issues or provide greater insight into utilization of telehealth modalities.