This Week’s ATA Brief: Hotels to Hospitals, CODE Industry Briefing, Call for Speakers, and More

For leaders making digital integral to how care is accessed, delivered, and scaled.

Dear ATA Community,

Hard to believe how fast summer is flying by. I hope you’ve had a chance to relax, recharge, and enjoy some time away.

As fall approaches, I wanted to flag a few exciting opportunities coming up. Telehealth Awareness Week will take place September 14–20, 2025. We’ll be hosting a weeklong series of virtual events that highlight the role of telehealth in care delivery, share new educational resources, and spotlight best practices from healthcare professionals advancing digital health on the front lines.

We’re also accepting speaker and research submissions for NEXUS 2026, happening May 12–15 in Orlando. If you’re interested in sharing your story or elevating your organization’s work, the deadline for priority consideration is October 3—so don’t wait to get your submission in.

And this November, we’ll bring together health system leaders for our Insights Summit Strategy Labs. These are hands-on, no-slide-deck working labs where clinical, operational, and digital leaders roll up their sleeves to tackle shared challenges in real time. The Labs are facilitated by members of our Center for Digital Excellence (CODE) and feature insights from member systems doing the work on the ground every day.

Registration is now open for the EDGE Policy Conference, taking place December 10–12 in Washington, DC. There’s a lot happening in Washington right now—and it’s reshaping virtual care. New policies. Shifting priorities. Big decisions. A new era of telehealth is being written in real time—and now is the time to make virtual care permanent.

Thanks for staying connected—and for all you do to keep pushing this field forward.

Brian Cardillo
Sr. Director, Marketing,  ATA

Speaker & Research Submissions Now Open for NEXUS

Apply to Speak at NEXUS 

The infrastructure is built. The teams are ready. Now it’s your turn. NEXUS 2026 is where healthcare leaders flip the switch on digital-native care—and we want your activation story. Share bold ideas, proven results, and real-world lessons driving transformation now.

Turn Evidence Into Impact: Submit Your Research

Got data and evidence that drive real-world impact? Share your findings, showcase what’s working, and help shape the next wave of evidence-based transformation in digital health and care delivery.

UCHealth

Lessons From COVID: Colorado Team Converts Hotel to Hospital

Southeast Colorado researchers, in collaboration with UCHealth and federal partners, have developed a rapid-deployment model to convert hotels into fully functional hospital wards within weeks. The concept treats hotels as extensions of hospital campuses, complete with nursing stations, imaging, and lab services, providing scalable surge capacity during public health emergencies. Read More »

Have news to share? Submit to our team here.

Heard at NEXUS 2025
CODE Industry Briefing - Accreditation in the Age of Digital Care- What’s Now, What’s Next

Participants: Christina Cordero, PhD, MPH, The Joint Commission; Patricia Griffin, MHA, MBA, RN, FACHE, Access TeleCare; Claire Mendelson, NCQA; Vanisa Patel, MPH, Access TeleCare

Access Telecare—a founding member of the ATA’s CODE initiative, has long championed the role of accreditation in ensuring safe, high-quality virtual care. In this session, they were joined by the Joint Commission and ATA member, NCQA, two leading accrediting bodies that have stepped up to meet the evolving needs of digital and hybrid care delivery.

Key Highlights:

• Access Telecare shared its journey as the first Joint Commission-accredited telemedicine provider.
• NCQA introduced its modular Virtual Care Accreditation program for primary, urgent, and behavioral health.
• The Joint Commission highlighted its TEL certification for exclusively virtual care organizations.
• All three underscored the strategic value of accreditation as a tool for aligning teams, driving quality, and building trust across care settings.
• Panelists discussed how accreditation frameworks are adapting to AI, data-driven care, and increasingly complex care models.

Top Takeaways:

• Accreditation is a strategic imperative, not just a compliance checkbox.

• Standards must support safe, consistent care across virtual and in-person settings.

• Early investment in accreditation signals organizational readiness and leadership in digital health.

“Accreditation isn’t just about compliance—it’s a strategic tool for building trust, scaling safely, and leading in digital care.”  - Patricia Griffin, MHA, MBA, RN, FACHE, Vice President of Quality & Safety, Access TeleCare

Apply to Join a Closed-Door Strategy Lab Driving Inpatient Transformation
ATA Insights Summit | November 16–18 |  Orlando, FL. 

Health systems nationwide are making inpatient transformation a top priority—and this closed-door Strategy Lab at the Insights Summit is designed to help senior leaders build the resources and tools to support digital implementation.

You’ll work alongside your peers in real-time to: 

• Share proven models for virtual nursing, TeleStroke, and digital command centers 
• Align inpatient innovation with broader consumer engagement strategies
• Build investment frameworks that work at any budget level
• Define immediate next steps based on what’s working across the industry 

The Strategy Lab is facilitated by members of ATA Center of Digital Excellence (CODE), with insights and real-world experiences from leading health systems. This is a peer-driven, outcome-focused lab. 

We’d love to have your voice at the table. Submit your application to attend

Upcoming SIG Meetings

• Home Testing SIG Meeting
   Tuesday, August 5
   2:00 PM ET

• Telemental Health SIG Meeting

   Wednesday, August 6

   1:00 PM ET

• Ocular Telehealth SIG Meeting

   Thursday, August 7

   12:00 PM ET

• DTx Product Commercialization and Reimbursement SIG Meeting

   Tuesday, August 12

   12:00 PM ET

Planning an Event for Telehealth Awareness Week?

We want to highlight it! Share your event title, date, time, and link with us at bcadillo@americantelemed.org, and we’ll include it in our official Telehealth Awareness Week event lineup.

ATA Action Urges New DEA Administrator To Take Urgent Action

In a press release, ATA Action urged the new head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Terry Cole, to take urgent action to establish a permanent framework for the remote prescribing of controlled substances that protects both patients and providers while enhancing access to critical and lifesaving prescriptions and treatments. Read our press release here.  

ATA Action also co-led a stakeholder letter to Administrator Cole, signed by 200+ organizations, calling for a permanent special registration framework that supports both patient access and safety.   

Medicare 2026 Physician Fee Schedule Includes Positive Steps Forward for Virtual Care

The CY2026 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) proposed rule includes a number of positive provisions addressing ATA Action’s top priorities, including updates to the Medicare Diabetes Prevention Program (MDPP), expansion of digital mental health treatment (DMHT) codes to include digital therapeutics for ADHD, and additional payment codes for remote monitoring. However, the proposed rule does not address a temporary COVID-era provision that allows providers to report their affiliated practice address rather than their home address on Medicare billing and enrollment forms, which is a significant issue for many of our members. Read our press release here.  

Input Requested: Medicare 2026 Proposed Rules for Home Health, DMEPOS, Outpatient Prospective Payment, and Ambulatory Surgical Center Systems

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has released several proposed rules relevant to the delivery of virtual care, including home health, durable medical equipment prosthetics, orthotics, and supplies (DMEPOS), outpatient services, and ambulatory surgical center services. Thus far, members have expressed an interest in commenting on various aspects relevant to the DMEPOS proposals, including:

• Change to reaccreditation requirements for suppliers from every three years to every year.
• Modification and expansion of grounds for CMS denying, revoking, or deactivating a provider's or supplier's Medicare enrollment and expanding the reasons for which CMS can apply a retroactive effective date for provider and supplier revocations.

The ATA Action team is continuing to evaluate these proposed rules and will be circulating a draft DMEPOS comment letter within the next few weeks. If there are other issues that you believe ATA Action should address in response to the Home Health (HH), DMEPOS, Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) or Ambulatory Surgical Center (ASC) proposed rules, please contact Alexis Apple at aapple@ataaction.org or Lara Compton at lcompton@ataaction.org. HH/DMEPOS comments are due September 2.   

Sign On to Stakeholder Letters – Deadline August 1

• The Medicare telehealth flexibilities are set to expire September 30, 2025, and we are preparing a letter to Congressional Leadership, calling for action to ensure Medicare beneficiaries are able to access telehealth services after September 2025. Join us and sign this letter urging Congress to make access to Medicare telehealth services permanent.
• You can also sign a stakeholder letter to Congressional Leaders asking for a full five-year extension of the Acute Hospital Care at Home (AHCaH) waiver program to be included in the September government funding package. The Hospital Inpatient Services Modernization Act will give health systems the stability and confidence they need to invest in and scale hospital-at-home programs. Please sign this letter to voice your support. 

President Trump Releases Artificial Intelligence Action Plan

The White House’s newly released AI Action Plan includes several healthcare-specific initiatives focused on accelerating adoption, reforming regulations, and establishing infrastructure for real-world testing. The plan identifies healthcare as one of the most critical sectors where AI adoption has lagged due to regulatory complexity, distrust, and a lack of governance standards. The administration proposes several initiatives to address these barriers and highlights the need for evaluation and compliance tools tailored to regulated industries like healthcare. The plan also recommends that federal AI-related funding be steered away from states with burdensome AI regulations that may diminish the effectiveness of those investments.  

Virtual Foodcare Coalition: FDA Rewriting Food Pyramid Recommendations

ATA Action attended a lecture series hosted by Sen. Rand Paul, where U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary noted that previous food pyramid recommendations led to overconsumption of ultra processed foods and a high correlation with heart disease. While Makary acknowledged that he does not think the government should tell people what to eat, he suggested they should be "rewriting the food pyramid right now." More information can be found