Medical recovery can now be done from home, through a screen: telerehabilitation enters the health law

A patient who has had knee surgery, or who has been discharged after a heart attack, will be able to do the rehabilitation sessions from home, in front of a screen, with the doctor watching and correcting from a distance. Law no. 138/2026, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 574 of 13 July 2026, adds telerehabilitation to the list of telemedicine services in Law no. 95/2006. It is the second move of 2026 that brings cardiac rehabilitation to the attention of the legislator, after leadless pacemakers were added to the list of reimbursed medical supplies.

The law is short, two articles, but it does two distinct things. First it adds a new letter, letter g), to the list of telemedicine services in Article 30^1(6) of Law no. 95/2006. Then it introduces a new article, Article 30^13, which says who may provide telerehabilitation and what it consists of.

Until now medical rehabilitation was, by definition, a hands-on activity: the patient came to the surgery or to the treatment facility. The new text acknowledges that part of it, the functional assessment, the guidance of the exercise, patient education and monitoring, can also be done through a screen.

What it changes in practice

Telerehabilitation becomes a legal category, not a tolerated practice. The text defines it as the remote delivery of physical and rehabilitation medicine services and of services ancillary to the medical act, by digital means, for the consultation, the functional assessment, the specialist therapeutic intervention, patient education and patient monitoring. That is five distinct components, not merely a teleconsultation.

The list of providers is exhaustive and follows a clear pattern. With no time restriction at all, it can be done by doctors with the specialty of rehabilitation, physical medicine and balneology, and of physical and rehabilitation medicine. Subject to a time restriction, it can be done by cardiologists, for patients in the acute phase of cardiovascular recovery, within the first 3 months after an acute cardiovascular event or a cardiac procedure; by neurologists and neurosurgeons, for the acute and the subacute phase, within the first 3 months; and by orthopaedic and trauma surgeons, likewise within the first 3 months after the orthopaedic operation or after a major musculoskeletal injury.

The professions around the medical act also come into play. Authorised providers of services ancillary to the medical act, the category that covers physiotherapists, kinesiotherapists, clinical psychologists and speech therapists, may provide telerehabilitation within the limits of the professional competences laid down by law. For them the law adds one further condition: the services are delivered in strict accordance with the prescription and the recommendations of the attending physician.

Letter e) opens a wide door. Besides the four named specialties, the text also allows telerehabilitation by doctors of other clinical specialties, within the limits of the professional competences laid down by law, without imposing any time limit on them.

Nothing can happen, though, until the implementing rules are issued. Article II requires the Ministry of Health to draw them up within 30 days of the law entering into force, and their approval comes by Government decision. They will set the technical conditions, the paperwork and, most important of all for the patient, whether and how the service is reimbursed. The college moved faster on its own rules: in September 2026 it replaced the whole recertification methodology, with 150 hours of supervised practice instead of 420.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

Telemedicine entered Law no. 95/2006 during the pandemic and stayed there, with a list of services that covered teleconsultation, tele-expertise, telemonitoring and the other classic forms. Medical rehabilitation was not among them. The practical consequence was that a kinesiotherapist guiding a patient through a video call was not, formally, performing a recognised medical act, and the practice had no way of billing it as a telemedicine service.

From 16 July 2026 the list has one letter more and an article of its own that develops it. The difference is not one of technology but of legal classification: the same Zoom call, or the same medical platform, now amounts to a telemedicine service, with the regime that follows from that.

The second change is that the law maps out, for the first time, a remote recovery pathway for the acute phase. The three months after a heart attack, a stroke or an orthopaedic operation were exactly the period in which the patient found it hardest to travel to hospital. The text assigns them explicitly to the cardiologist, the neurologist and the orthopaedic surgeon, not only to the rehabilitation physician.

The third change concerns the ancillary professions. The physiotherapist and the kinesiotherapist gain a legal basis for working at a distance, but under a condition that doctors do not have: the prescription and the recommendations of the attending physician. That is a hierarchy written into the law, not merely a practice of the clinic.

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