The so-called “telehealth cliff” has rolled back most of the pandemic-era flexibilities for Medicare, leaving what was once a booming virtual care market stuck in political gridlock. We asked our experts where they think this is headed 2026? Here is what they had to say.
And check out all our prediction posts looking to 2026.
Dr. Jay Anders, Chief Medical Officer, Medicomp Systems
LinkedIn: Jay Anders MD
Virtual care is no longer an ancillary service line; it is becoming a cornerstone of modern medicine, and that shift raises the stakes for data quality in 2026. Regardless of what happens to pandemic-era telehealth flexibilities, the future of virtual care will depend on accurate, connected, and context-rich information that provides clinicians with a reliable and complete view of their patients. That means practices that invest in strengthening their data foundations next year will be best positioned to deliver safe, effective, and lasting virtual care.
Carla Balch, Executive Director Aranscia Software & Products, Founder, Spesana
LinkedIn: Carla Balch
Today’s virtual world is capable of certain levels of healthcare engagement via telemedicine. For young mothers or for those who have caregiving responsibilities in the home, access and convenience is a priority. If we can bank and shop remotely, people expect convenience. If astronauts can have full medical services in space…
Danielle Bergman, MSN, APRN, FNP-BC, AVP Clinical Development, Lightbeam Health Solutions
LinkedIn: Danielle Bergman, MSN, APRN, FNP-BC
Virtual pediatric care is evolving from transactional video visits to longitudinal, relationship-based care. The most “Even with ongoing policy uncertainty around telehealth, virtual care isn’t going anywhere. This moment is a reminder that care delivery can’t hinge on temporary waivers or shifting political timelines. By 2026, we’ll see a move from fragmented, one-off virtual visits to fully integrated, EHR-embedded models supported by AI triage, ambient documentation, and coordinated workflows. Patients rely on this level of access, and clinicians rely on the stability it brings — and the organizations pairing strong policy advocacy with measurable ROI and thoughtful operational redesign will be the ones able to deliver safe, consistent, connected care.
Jeanne Cohen, CEO and Founder, Motive Medical Intelligence
LinkedIn: Jeanne Cohen
In 2026, virtual care will move toward a more mature, data-driven model that integrates seamlessly with value-based care. The temporary loss of broad flexibilities has forced healthcare organizations to refine telehealth into what, perhaps, it was originally meant to be — a tool for access, continuity, and quality that supports and integrates with the traditional care delivery system. Telehealth’s next evolution is right-sizing this capability to be one element of a designed omni channel system that delivers measurable improvements across the care continuum.
Michael Dalton, CEO and Founder, Ovatient
LinkedIn: Michael Dalton
I’m cautiously optimistic Congress will make telehealth and Hospital-at-Home flexibilities permanent. The recent lapse during the government shutdown forced health systems to abruptly pause long-standing programs and created uncertainty for seniors and clinicians, alike. Clinically and politically, the case for making these flexibilities permanent is strong: telehealth now consistently accounts for about 5% of Medicare outpatient visits and there is bipartisan support for using virtual care to help reach patients in underserved communities, from rural to urban America and everywhere in between. With all this in mind, the question isn’t if Congress acts, but when and for how long.
Joel Diamond, Chief Medical Officer, Aranscia
LinkedIn: Joel Diamond
The latest rolling back of Medicare telehealth services is not sustainable. I have many disabled or homebound patients that rely on telemedicine as a lifeline. The mandates and economics tied to transitions of care post-hospital and annual wellness often necessitate virtual care in this population.
Alexandria Foley, CNO, Brook
LinkedIn: Alexandria Foley
Recently, policy rollbacks have exposed that virtual care tools can only be successful when they are integrated into clinical pathways. As a result, remote patient monitoring paired with AI-driven triage and human support and coaching will be more likely to survive the upcoming regulatory squeeze, especially where outcomes and reduced downstream utilization are demonstrated. Providers who make remote patient monitoring the standard will see measurable results that help preserve access regardless of shifting politics and regulation.
Susan Grant, Chief Clinical Officer, symplr
LinkedIn: Susan Grant
In 2026, AI and operations tools will help illuminate and reduce care inequities by identifying underserved patient populations and flagging social-determinant risks in real time. We will lean into transparent governance and shared clinical-IT decision-making, so that algorithms don’t perpetuate bias—nurses and other caregivers must be part of design, testing, and refinement of algorithms. By streamlining administrative burden and surfacing discreet patient-need signals, technology can help clinicians deliver more personalized, proactive care. I believe stronger equity will emerge when we build systems that amplify the patient’s full context, not just clinical symptoms.
Patricia Hayes, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Imagine Pediatrics
Virtual pediatric care is evolving from transactional video visits to longitudinal, relationship-based care. The most effective care models will make data-informed care decisions and will integrate medical, behavioral health, and social supports to create long-term continuity for children with special health care needs, particularly those in rural or underserved areas. As telehealth policies stabilize, virtual care will become an essential bridge to access care for vulnerable populations rather than a temporary convenience. Ultimately, this will result in cost savings that are bolstered by better outcomes and experience.
Sunil Konda, Chief Product Officer, SYNERGEN Health
LinkedIn: Sunil Konda
As we look ahead at 2026, I think we will see increasing adoption of AI agents and deeper integration with existing systems in revenue cycle.. This will look like front-end errors being prevented and corrected instead of being appealed, which will save on days to authorize and days in A/R. AI agents will continue to surge and stitch together all the aspects of check-in, eligibility verification, coding and denial management.
Luigi Leblanc, VP of Technology, Zane Networks
LinkedIn: Luigi Leblanc
By 2026, the future of virtual care will be shaped more by market expectations than by federal action. The end of pandemic-era flexibilities exposed how dependent Medicare telehealth growth was on temporary policy changes, yet it also showed that patients and clinicians are not willing to return to old models. In 2026, Congress will likely encounter renewed pressure to modernize Medicare telehealth rules because the healthcare system cannot afford the status quo.
Workforce shortages, rising chronic care needs, and strong patient demand will continue to push hybrid models forward. Even if federal policy evolves slowly, commercial plans and health systems will keep expanding virtual first services, remote monitoring, and asynchronous care. Innovation will continue regardless of political delays.
Dr. Tom Milam, Chief Medical Officer, Iris Telehealth
LinkedIn: Dr. Tom Milam
A Defining Year for Telehealth Clarity and Controlled Substance Reform
For five years now, the DEA’s temporary prescribing exceptions have been renewed at the eleventh hour, often just days before they expire. This type of uncertainty is unsustainable for both providers and patients. We need a permanent, transparent framework that aligns with the Ryan Haight Act and supports safe, ongoing access to care. And with telecare now a normal part of practice, it’s hard to justify prescribing rules built around outdated in-person requirements. AI will also play an important role here, helping healthcare organizations automatically track compliance and flag potential issues, so providers aren’t spending countless hours manually parsing regulations. Providers and patients have been asking for clarity for years, and the pressure isn’t letting up. What’s changing now is the urgency. 2026 will bring even stronger calls for a stable, long-term framework.
Lance Reid, CEO, Telcion Communications Group
LinkedIn: Lance Reid
Virtual care will not accelerate in 2026 until cybersecurity does. The telehealth cliff did not stall the market. The real problem is weak security around identity, data, and infrastructure. Health systems adopted virtual care fast, but the foundation never matured.
Next year, progress comes from tightening authentication, strengthening networks, and proving end-to-end protection. As Congress finalizes long-term rules, buyers will favor virtual care platforms that are secure by design and easy to integrate. Virtual care grows again when organizations treat cybersecurity as the requirement for innovation, not the obstacle.
Bethany Robertson, Clinical Executive, Wolters Kluwer Health
LinkedIn: Bethany Robertson
Over the past year we have seen the nursing industry experience significant shifts as transformative care models and technologies like Gen AI, virtual nursing and ambient listening tools move from a pipedream to actual implementations. In 2026, leading healthcare organizations will continue to take steps forward with building the infrastructure, training and guidelines needed to facilitate, not hinder nurses’ daily workflows.
Under a landscape where workforce shortages, career satisfaction and unbalanced patient ratios are still negatives, health systems implementing these new offerings need their nursing workforce involved in the roll out and subsequent evaluation of these tools. This ensures that the use cases support the issues in their workflow and aren’t seen as a decision made by leadership in absence of nursing’s voice, while also understanding the true impact of the efforts. This cultural shift toward tech adoption will empower nurses to work more efficiently, reduce burnout, and elevate the overall quality of care. Ultimately, these trends will position nursing as a dynamic, technology-supported profession that remains at the forefront of patient-centered innovation.
Reva Sheehan, Senior Vice President of Health Solutions, DUOS
LinkedIn: Reva Sheehan
The pandemic brought with it a lot of flexibilities, many of which were to address access issues when provider groups and healthcare delivery systems were maxed and or only supporting ‘essential’ needs like COVID-19 patients and acute and emergency care. Flexibilities not only applied to who can seek virtual or telephonic care, but how those providers were reimbursed, the mechanisms in which they were allowed to provide care, and where they were located, for example. What we saw in the earlier days coming out of the pandemic was an uptick in patients accessing mental health services supporting the continuation of flexibilities. CMS and other organizations had the data to support that telehealth use was safe, effective, and meeting patient needs in a market segment that often has less than adequate service providers. For me, it’s less about the virtual care market being stuck in limbo than it is the patients who have come to rely on the ability to seek services and support when and where they need them the most. Virtual and remote options are simply more flexible than many in-person visits, especially for working families – not to mention it’s a lower cost alternative (for patient and payer alike) in many instances where an in-person visit isn’t necessary. As an industry, we have figured it out once, and the industry should be able to figure it out again as we head into 2026. Just as before, the industry must apply meaningful logic based on the data we have collected over the last five years and make a path forward in 2026.
John Showalter, MD, MSIS, chief operating officer of Linus Health
LinkedIn: John Showalter
In 2026, virtual care services will extend even further beyond routine televisits. We will see a true shift toward clinical-grade home assessments that give clinicians the same confidence in what happens at home as they have in the exam room. For example, AI-powered digital tools capable of capturing objective cognitive, behavioral, and physiologic data remotely will make it possible to identify risk earlier, reach medically underserved populations, and support more consistent follow-up. As these assessments integrate into more electronic health records and population health platforms, virtual healthcare will become an essential driver of health equity, adherence, and proactive intervention, ultimately meeting patients where they are, while keeping both body and brain health in focus.
Jim Szyperski, CEO, Acuity Behavioral Health
LinkedIn: Jim Szyperski
Digital tools are rapidly reshaping how mental health care is delivered, monitored, and reimbursed. Their promise lies in delivering more precise insights into a patient’s condition, enabling earlier interventions and expanding access to services beyond traditional care settings. But as with any rapid transformation in health care, there is risk of leaving some patients behind. Without an equitable standard by which to measure and assess patients, digital mental health very likely will unintentionally reproduce, and even amplify, disparities as use of the technology scales.
Stephen Vaccaro, President, HHAeXchange
LinkedIn: Stephen Vaccaro
Some states may pilot skill-based billing in Medicaid programs.
With payers seeking innovative ways to boost outcomes for members with complex needs, the industry’s growing emphasis on caregiver training could prompt states to explore new reimbursement models that build on the goal of value-based care. In fact, HHAeXchange’s 2025 Homecare Insights: Provider Voices Survey revealed 69.7% of providers already offer specialized training to caregivers, with disease-specific care being the most commonly offered type. The industry’s recognition of specialized caregiver training’s direct impact on client health makes it more likely that states will pilot Medicaid tiered reimbursement based on specific caregiver credentials and skills.
In general, homecare is seeing more investments in statewide training programs with specialized requirements intended to improve outcomes. In Missouri, for example, Medicaid requires 75 hours of training to become a certified homecare aide, followed by a state assessment. The state-approved training program, which includes 59 hours of knowledge training and 16 hours of hands-on guidance, covers topics like basic nursing skills, infection control, and nutrition and hydration needs. For states that already have programs like this in place, skill-based billing is a practical way to ensure reimbursement reflects the training, effort, and expertise required at the point of care.