Assessment of Patient Preferences for Telehealth in Post–COVID-19 Pandemic Health Care

EN BREF ...

"Telehealth use rapidly increased in the US during the COVID-19 pandemic, with many health care practitioners offering telephone or video visits to reduce the potential for virus spread. It is unclear how telehealth will be used within the US health care system after the pandemic, with early evidence suggesting that telehealth use is decreasing as patients and clinicians resume in-person care. Payers are currently making decisions about postpandemic reimbursement policy and considering telehealth’s implications for quality, costs, fraud, and abuse. These decisions are informed by claims data analyses of telehealth utilization and clinician surveys and interviews regarding their experiences with delivering telemedicine. Surveys of the general public have been conducted, but they generally describe the different visit modalities available and the interest or willingness to use telehealth. A nationally representative survey from 2020 found that 40% of patients with a health condition used telehealth in the spring of 2020.6 Surveys from before the COVID-19 pandemic found that 49% to 66% of the respondents were interested in using video visits, with greater preference for telehealth when seeing their own clinician vs a new clinician. Although numerous studies have shown that patients are satisfied with telehealth and appreciate its convenience, data are scarce on the role that patients would like telehealth to play in their overall care, including within hybrid care models, and the perceived value of telehealth compared with other visit modalities. Such information is key to understanding the implications of different coverage and reimbursement policies, including cost sharing, for the demand for telehealth and the potential backlash of rolling back the telehealth flexibilities that were implemented for the COVID-19 pandemic." En Bref issu de l'étude.