AJMC Studies Explore the Pandemic's Impact on Telehealth, Care Access, and Patient Experience

One study, titled “Telemedicine Catches On: Changes in the Utilization of Telemedicine Services During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” examined telemedicine expansion, both overall and across various patient subpopulations and diagnoses.2 Despite the disruptive effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the researchers hypothesized that telemedicine visits would significantly increase due to the need for continuous care.To test this hypothesis, they analyzed health insurance claims for telemedicine visits during the prepandemic (January 1, 2018, through March 10, 2020) and pandemic (March 11, 2020, through October 31, 2020) periods. The study included claims from 1,589,777 telemedicine visits submitted to Independence Blue Cross, covering both telemedicine-only providers and those traditionally offering in-person care.

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The primary exposures included state stay-at-home orders, individual behavior changes, and Independence Blue Cross's expansion of telemedicine billing policies. Also, the comparison group was telemedicine visits during the prepandemic period.Telemedicine visits increased rapidly, from a mean (SD) of 773 (155) weekly visits during the prepandemic period to 45,632 (19,937) weekly visits during the pandemic period. Compared with the prepandemic period, a greater proportion of telemedicine users during the pandemic were older, had Medicare Advantage insurance plans, had existing chronic conditions, or resided in predominantly non-Hispanic Black or African American census tracts.

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