The Pennsylvania Senate announced on October 26, 2021 that it has passed Senate Bill 705, and a copy of the Senate Press Release can be found at https://www.pasenategop.com/blog/senate-approves-telemedicine-bill/.

A previous telemedicine bill was passed in Pennsylvania in July of 2018, when the Pennsylvania Senate approved Bill 780, which was discussed in my MedLaw Blog article of July 30, 2018 .

This legislation obviously requires passage by both the State House of Representatives and signature by the governor.

The most significant obvious difference, as you can see in the markup, is that the new bill would define health care provider not only as any licensed or certified individual, but one who is “otherwise regulated to provide health care services under the laws of this Commonwealth”, which is certainly a broader and less definitive definition.