The Toronto Star
Ontario recently announced it is renewing virtual care billing codes until September 2022, allowing doctors to deliver OHIP-covered telemedicine for at least another 12 months.
While the provincial renewal is certainly a step in the right direction, it’s time for the government to make virtual care billing codes permanent.
This is not a new call from physicians. In September 2020, months into the COVID-19 crisis, we stressed the importance of ensuring virtual billing codes don’t fade once the pandemic does. We saw this mistake with the SARS outbreak: Ontario’s temporary telemedicine codes were abandoned once things resumed to “normal.”
Read the opinion piece by Think’s Dr. Parminder Singh and Dr. Naila Kassam in the Toronto Star here.