Presumed Hospital Profit

Possible Application to Telemedicine Modalities Based on Jurisprudence

Abstract

The pandemic caused by covid-19 brought an improvement in the use of distance medical services in Brazil. The expansion of the use of applications on mobile devices favored the consolidation of telemedicine for more complex surgical procedures and consultations. With the advent of Resolution n. 2,314/2022, new telemedicine modalities, as a means of practicing medicine, were regulated for the purpose of assistance and health promotion. The recent publication of Law n. 14,510/2022, regulating the provision of telehealth services, consolidated the practices already adopted. The purpose of this article is to analyze the judicial and administrative jurisprudence on presumed hospital profit in order to verify whether the modalities of telemedicine services can be covered by the percentages of article 15, § 1, III, “a”, of Law n. 9,249/1995. After legal and jurisprudential analysis, it was concluded that the types of medical care known as telediagnosis, telesurgery and telemonitoring can be characterized as hospital services in the broad sense, by the very nature of the activities, and are therefore eligible for the special treatment of presumed hospital profits, provided that the legal requirements are met. Teleconsultation, teleinterconsultation and teleconsultancy, on the other hand, have the characteristics of simple medical consultations and are therefore not covered by the reduction in the presumption percentage in the presumed profit.