What Does the Future Hold for Telehealth?
Telehealth remains a major topic of debate and study in the health policy community. This article looks at several recent newsworthy items in the telehealth space. This includes hundreds of groups lobbying the U.S. Senate for telehealth policy extensions, a study showing consumer preference for telehealth visits, and further debate about these services.
Hundreds of Groups Lobby Senate for Extension of Telehealth Policies
Companies such as Amazon and Walmart joined hundreds of provider groups, hospitals and virtual care companies pressing Congress to take action on telehealth legislation this fall. More than 370 organizations sent a joint letter to bipartisan leadership of the U.S. Senate to pass a two-year extension of important telehealth policies enacted at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, those policies are set to expire 151 days after the end of the public health emergency.
Policy certainty beyond the COVID-19 public health emergency is essential to continuing access to telehealth for both Medicare and commercial market patients, the groups wrote in the letter. The hundreds of employers, providers and health tech companies that signed the letter represent a spectrum of organizations with customers and patients that are impacted by telehealth policy. The signers include consumer groups representing mental health, chronic disease and primary care as well as providers including physicians, nurses and physical therapists along with employers representing millions of Americans who receive their coverage through their jobs.
“More than 400 members of the House voted to extend telehealth flexibilities in July, and it’s time for the Senate to follow. Without more policy certainty around telehealth, beneficiary access could be compromised,” said Krista Drobac, executive director of the Alliance for Connected Care. “The House created the momentum, we hope the Senate will seize it and enact comprehensive telehealth legislation this fall.”
Consumers Prefer Telehealth
Most telehealth consumers prefer virtual care over in-person visits for several forms of routine care, a new survey by J.D. Power has found. The survey, in its fourth iteration, reached more than 4,300 consumers who used telehealth services in the last 12 months and was conducted from June to July of this year. It found that 67% of respondents accessed video telehealth services in the past year, up from 37% in 2019. And nearly all respondents who received medical services via telehealth say they would do so again in the future.
Among the routine care most respondents prefer via telehealth, 8 out of 10 consumers cited prescription refills. Consumers also cited other routine visits such as reviewing medication options (72%) and discussing test results (71%). More than half also prefer it for regular mental health visits. Consumers cited convenience, the ability to receive care quickly and the ease of access to health information as top reasons for using telehealth.
Study Looks at Telehealth
A recent study in JAMA Health Forum looks at how patients used the technology to access providers across state lines during the COVID-19 pandemic. “There are ongoing debates about whether to permanently change licensure regulations to facilitate out-of-state telemedicine visits,” concluded the study published last Friday in JAMA Health Forum.
The study found that data on this issue so far have been limited, and they pulled their information from “a period where licensure regulations were temporarily waived, out-of-state telemedicine visits were common and used most by patients who live near state borders or in rural communities, those receiving primary care services and mental health treatment, and those receiving cancer care.”
Researchers with Harvard Medical School and other institutions focused on the use of telemedicine visits for fee-for-service Medicare recipients between January to June 2021. “We chose this period because it was after the turmoil of the early pandemic when vaccines became widely available and the health care system had stabilized, but before many of the temporary licensing regulations began to lapse by mid-2021,” the study said.
Reinstating pre-pandemic restrictions on telemedicine would hurt patients living near a border, who the study said are subject to “an accident of geography.” The researchers note that “a patient with a primary care physician who lives in the middle of a state can access care via telemedicine. However, a similar patient living near a state border with a primary care physician in the neighboring state now will have to physically travel to that appointment.”
The authors suggest that lawmakers should perhaps allow telemedicine visits for states within a region, although there may be some question about what actually constitutes a region. For instance, the U.S. Census Bureau says that there are four regions: the Northeast, the Midwest, the South, and the West. The Bureau of Economic analysis splits the nation into eight different regions.