{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.schatz.senate.gov/news/press-releases/senate-passes-schatz-wicker-resolution-designating-telehealth-awareness-week", "Senate Passes Schatz-Wicker Resolution Designating Telehealth Awareness Week", "2022-09-29", "2022", "2022-09", "Democrat", "Senate", "HI", "Brian Schatz", "S001194", "www.schatz.senate.gov", "schatz", "https://www.schatz.senate.gov/news/press-releases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON \u2013 Last night, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a bipartisan resolution authored by U.S. Senators Brian Schatz (D-Hawai\u2018i) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) designating September 18-24 as \u201cTelehealth Awareness Week.\u201d The resolution recognized that telehealth has helped millions of people access quality health care, and has become a critical component of health care delivery.\n\n\u201cTelehealth helps people get quality health care safely and when they need it, and our resolution is a way for Congress to show bipartisan support for and make more people aware of these important services,\u201d said Senator Schatz.\n\n\u201cTelehealth has increasingly become essential to delivering quality health care to all Americans,\u201d Senator Wicker said. \u201cThis resolution honors the great progress that has been made, and it sends a strong signal that Congress is committed to making these services more accessible to communities across the country.\u201d\n\nThe resolution recognized the bipartisan support in Congress for telehealth and encouraged expanded access to telehealth services for all people, including members of rural and underserved communities. It noted that more than 28 million Medicare beneficiaries used telehealth services during the first year of the pandemic, an increase of 88 percent. It concluded that \u201cTelehealth Awareness Week\u201d will unite the efforts of patients, caregivers, health care providers, policymakers, and other stakeholders to advance the role of telehealth in health care.\n\nThe resolution was cosponsored by U.S. Senators Ben Cardin (D-Md.), John Thune (R-S.D.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), and Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.).\n\nSchatz has led efforts in the Senate to expand access to telehealth, including introducing a Telehealth Awareness Week resolution last September. He also reintroduced the CONNECT for Health Act last year, the most comprehensive bipartisan telehealth legislation in Congress. Since its first iteration in 2016, several provisions from the bill have been signed into law.\n\nThe full text of the resolution is available here.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T03:08:33Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.schatz.senate.gov/news/press-releases/senate-passes-schatz-wicker-resolution-designating-telehealth-awareness-week"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.565480837598443, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}