Definition
The TCPA healthcare exemption is the FCC's 2015 exemption allowing certain healthcare calls and texts with a treatment purpose to be made to wireless numbers without prior express consent, provided the caller meets strict conditions on content, frequency, and opt-out.
The FCC adopted the exemption in its July 2015 TCPA Omnibus Declaratory Ruling and Order, for calls that have exigency and a healthcare treatment purpose and are free to the recipient. Covered call types include appointment and exam confirmations and reminders, wellness checkups, hospital pre-registration instructions, pre-operative instructions, lab results, post-discharge follow-up intended to prevent readmission, prescription notifications, and home healthcare instructions. Calls that include telemarketing, solicitation, or advertising, or billing, accounting, or other financial content, are excluded. A separate FCC provision covers certain prerecorded healthcare messages to residential lines.
The conditions are what make it narrow. Calls may go only to the wireless number the patient provided; must state the name and contact information of the healthcare provider; must be concise, generally one minute or less for a voice call or 160 characters or less for a text; are limited to one call or message per day and three per week from a specific provider; must offer an easy opt-out that is honored immediately; and must comply with HIPAA privacy rules. Calls that exceed the frequency cap or add billing content fall outside the exemption.
Two developments shape how it applies today. Because the FCC treats AI-generated voices as "artificial" voices, an AI call relying on the exemption has to meet the same conditions as a prerecorded one. And the FCC's broader "revoke-all" revocation provision has been delayed to January 31, 2027; during that waiver, opting out of one healthcare message type stops only that type. The exemption does not reach everything a provider or plan calls about, and healthcare organizations are now TCPA defendants, as the Fried v. Kaiser and Patterson v. OptumRx settlements show.
How Consig handles it
Consig's view is that the healthcare exemption is narrower than many teams assume. Its compliance engine enforces the relevant federal and state calling rules on each call, and opt-out recognition runs as a deterministic stage rather than being left to a generative model.