The Latest Research, Commentary, And News From Health Affairs
Tuesday, February 23, 2021
Dear John,
A new A Health Podyssey on telemedicine was just released this morning. It’s a good one.
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Telemedicine, Equity, and COVID-19
There's no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic spurred an increase in telemedicine use. As Americans were reluctant to venture out of their homes in the pandemic's early months, both public and private payers were quick to change telehealth reimbursement policies as hospital admissions plummeted.
According to new research published in the February edition of Health Affairs by Sadiq Patel and coauthors, 30.1 percent of all outpatient visits were provided via telemedicine from January 2020 to June 2020. The weekly number of telemedicine visits increased 23-fold during the same time period.
Patel and Michael Barnett join Alan Weil on today’s A Health Podyssey to discuss variation in telemedicine use during the pandemic, the speed of their research, and where the telemedicine field may be heading.
Mental health conditions, which have increased in prevalence since the pandemic began, saw the highest proportion of telehealth visits in the COVID-19 period. More than 50 percent of depression, bipolar disorder, and anxiety-related health care visits for commercially insured and Medicare Advantage enrollees took place via telehealth between March and June 2020.
Despite this increase in uptake, there are concerns that reliance on telemedicine may exacerbate health disparities. Many point to the “digital divide,” or
differences in the accessibility of internet services and technology tools to access telehealth care.
For more on telehealth, check out our blog posts andjournal articles on this increasingly important topic.
Rurality often intersects with other social determinants of health, including race/ethnicity. Today, as part of our Elevating Voices series during Black History Month, we look back at an article published by Health Affairs in December 2019. In the piece, Carrie E. Henning-Smith and coauthors examine racial/ethnic differences in premature death among rural residents and how those differences are influenced by contextual, demographic, and structural factors. The authors argue that policies to address inequities should address “economic vitality and current and historical political context.”
Listen to Health Affairs Editor-in-Chief Alan Weil interview Michael Barnett and Sadiq Patel from Harvard on how telemedicine use changed during the COVID-19 pandemic and where the field may be heading.
Health Affairs is the leading peer-reviewedjournalat the intersection of health, health care, and policy. Published monthly by Project
HOPE, the journal is available in print and online. Late-breaking content is also found through healthaffairs.org, Health Affairs Today, and Health Affairs Sunday Update.
Project HOPE is a global health and humanitarian relief organization that places power in the hands of local health care workers to save lives across the globe. Project HOPE has published Health Affairs since 1981.
