HHS Renews Declaration of Public Health Emergency for COVID-19

Last week, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Alex Azar formallyrenewed the agency ’s determination that the COVID-19 pandemic is a public health emergency. The extension of this public health emergency keeps many regulatory changes and waivers relevant to psychiatrists—such asrelaxed telemedicine restrictions—in effect for the time being.Secretary Azar first declared COVID-19 a public health emergency in late January and subsequently renewed that status on April 21. APA and other health organizations had urged the Trump administration to authorize another extension to help combat the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. There have been over 4 million cases of COVID-19 and nearly 150,000 COVID-related deaths since the virus was first identified in the United States on January 20.“APA recently surveyed its membership to understand the impact of easing telehealth regulations on practice during the PHE [public health emergency]. The survey found a major shift to the use of telehealth after the PHE was declared,” wrote APA CEO and Medical Director Saul Levin, M.D., M.P.A., in aletter to the HHS secretary. “While the changes were necessary to comply with physical distancing and self-isolation mandates, this shows that telehealth for treating psychiatric and substance use disorders can be adopted quickly, and efficiently, and that most barriers to doing so in the first place may have been regulatory in nature. These survey results mirror national research on telehe...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: Alex Azar COVID-19 Food and Drug Administration Health and Human Services HHS public health emergency Saul Levin telehealth telemedicine Source Type: research