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Congress just gave rural America 40 days of telehealth. Then what?
Let that sink in.
After extending Medicare telehealth flexibilities through January 30, 2026, we’re staring down another cliff that threatens to abandon rural patients. Again.
Here’s what happens on January 31 if Congress doesn’t act:
🚫 No more virtual visits from home for rural Medicare patients
🚫 Physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech pathologists lose telehealth billing rights entirely
🚫 Patients must travel to approved facilities for any telehealth service
🚫 FQHCs and rural health clinics can no longer serve as distant-site providers
Think about the 82-year-old farmer with heart failure in Montana. The stroke survivor in rural Mississippi needing weekly speech therapy. The diabetic grandmother in West Virginia managing multiple chronic conditions.
On February 1, they’ll lose the virtual care that’s kept them healthy and home.
The irony? CMS just spent November issuing retroactive payment guidance for the October telehealth lapse, telling providers to refund patients and resubmit claims. We’re literally fixing one short-term extension mess while creating another.
Rural America already faces:
• 27 labor and delivery unit closures in 2025
• Physician shortages in 80% of rural counties
• Average travel times of 40+ minutes to specialty care
Now we’re telling these communities that the telehealth lifeline they’ve relied on for 5 years will vanish overnight.
Congress knows this. The Telehealth Modernization Act sits there, ready to extend these flexibilities through 2027. Bipartisan support exists. Yet here we are, playing chicken with rural healthcare access.
This isn’t about technology adoption anymore. It’s about whether we believe rural Americans deserve the same healthcare access as everyone else.
47 days to decide.
♻️ Repost if rural patients deserve permanent telehealth access
👉 Follow me, Jonathan Govette, for real-time updates on healthcare technology and business news. LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathangovette/
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Author:
CEO/Co-Founder @ Oatmeal Health | AI Lung Cancer Screening | Almost Became a Doctor | Engineer | Follow to Share What I’ve Learned Along the Way
I help patients get the care they need earlier, preventing late-stage cancer.
That’s been the throughline across three companies and almost 20 years in healthcare. At ReferralMD, we fixed broken referral networks so patients didn’t fall through the cracks. At Oatmeal Health, it’s lung cancer: building the diagnostic and screening infrastructure so the 85% of cases caught too late get caught early instead.
Today as CEO of Oatmeal Health, I lead a team embedding AI into radiology workflows to turn routine lung CT scans into reimbursable cancer risk assessments. We partner with FQHCs to reach underserved communities, and with health systems and payers to make early detection economically sustainable. Think HeartFlow or Cleerly, but for lungs.
Between companies, I advised at Techstars and Plug and Play, mentoring founders building in digital health. That experience shaped how I think about what separates companies that ship from companies that stall: distribution, reimbursement, and clinical trust, not just technology.
I’m a CancerX alumnus, a 3x healthcare founder, and someone who believes the biggest problems in cancer aren’t scientific. They’re operational.
We’re hiring mission-driven builders at Oatmeal Health. If you want to work on something that matters, reach out.
When I’m not working, I’m traveling, mentoring, and keeping up with one very energetic husky. 🐾
Substack – The Oatmeal Bite:
Millions of patients get less care because of who they are, where they live, or how they look. I’m fighting to change that. CEO @OatmealHealth, a startup built for the underserved. The Oatmeal Bite: intel for clinicians, investors, and advocates.
Jonathan Govette
CEO of Oatmeal Health
Substack:
https://oatmealhealthjonathangovette.substack.com/
