Medicare Just Cut Telehealth for PTs, OTs, and SLPs - What Employers Need to Know

While most of Medicare's telehealth flexibilities got a multi-year extension through 2027, one group was left out. As of January 31, 2026, physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, and audiologists can no longer furnish Medicare telehealth services. Bringing that back requires a separate act of Congress — and right now, there's no guaranteed timeline for it.

Who this actually affects

• Outpatient rehab practices that built teletherapy programs for post-surgical or chronic-condition patients.
• Rural and homebound Medicare patients who relied on virtual PT/OT/SLP visits when in-person access wasn't practical.
• Multi-disciplinary telehealth platforms that bundled physical medicine alongside physician and NP visits — the physician/NP side of the bundle kept its extension; the therapy side did not.

What employers should do now, not later

If your organization has been billing Medicare for virtual PT, OT, SLP, or audiology visits, that revenue line stopped on January 31 whether or not your billing team has caught up to it yet. Waiting for a legislative fix is a real strategy — Congress has restored lapsed telehealth flexibilities before — but it isn't a staffing plan.

• Rebuild in-person or hybrid capacity for the patient population that was being served virtually, rather than assuming the flexibility returns on the old schedule.
• Where private payers still reimburse virtual therapy visits, segment your patient scheduling so Medicare patients are routed to in-person slots without disrupting the rest of the caseload.
• Keep a contingency staffing plan ready — if Congress does restore the flexibility, the practices that can scale virtual capacity back up fastest will recapture that patient volume first.

DirectShifts can help you staff the in-person or hybrid coverage gap this creates while the legislative picture plays out. Talk to a clinician partner about building a flexible allied health staffing plan that isn't dependent on the next extension vote.