In the technology category is telehealth – the ability for patients to “see” a health care provider from the comfort of their own homes and for hospitals and clinics to bring a physician to a patient even if they are in physically different locations.

 

Telehealth, of course, was used prior to the pandemic. But, the pandemic served as a catalyst for change in driving a dramatic increase in the availability and use of telehealth. Before COVID-19, there was a lingering sense that patients opposed the idea of health care through a screen. Physicians and nurses expressed concern that a remote care experience would be “less than.”

 

Almost overnight, that changed.

 

Safety, quality, accessibility, and patient experience revealed themselves as telehealth’s opportunity.

 

COVID-19 pushed telehealth from a niche service to something widespread and commonplace. The number of individuals able to access critical health care services – that they likely would have gone without but for telehealth – skyrocketed over the course of the pandemic. One study from Definitive Healthcare put the increase in telehealth visits at more than 6,000 percent. According to that data, internal medicine and psychiatry were the specialties with the highest volume of telemedicine claims in 2020 — 157,852 and 147,181, respectively. Another study of data from the telehealth provider Doctor On Demand by Harvard Medical School and the RAND Corporation, reported increases of 109 percent for unscheduled behavioral health visits and 130 percent for chronic illness visits via telehealth from February through April 2020 over the year before.

 

Almost immediately at the beginning of the pandemic, Florida’s Governor and Surgeon General issued emergency orders to swiftly remove regulatory barriers to widespread telehealth use. A March 31, 2020 order from the Surgeon General allowed health care providers to conduct health visits via telephone only, without videoconferencing, so long as they specifically noted that video capability was unavailable, and that the provider could appropriately identify the patient’s identity.

 

Our challenge today is to identify opportunities to sustain this increase in telehealth availability and use. We know what a difference convenient, safe, and reliable access can make for a teenager in need of mental health counseling or for a 68-year-old with diabetes. For too many people, lack of transportation is a barrier to accessing timely, appropriate health care. Telehealth eliminates that barrier.

 

In addition, the urgency to make sure telehealth remains a permanent, accessible fixture of our health care system is made clear in the recent trends showing the significant increase in patients seeking mental health care in hospital emergency departments for psychiatric concerns and overdoses. In research published in the February 2001 JAMA Psychiatry, researchers with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention specifically highlight strategies to support telehealth and addiction treatment services as critical for addressing people’s behavioral health needs in a more timely manner and reducing the number of crisis-related ED visits.

 

As COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths continue decreasing, the health care system has an opportunity to reflect on those aspects of the system that worked well and to identify ways to augment and amplify their role. With respect to telehealth, that work will be to figure out how to maintain it as a purposeful part of the operational design of care delivery to ensure that:

• Telehealth solutions are introduced thoughtfully with the explicit goal to improve access to care.

• Patient and health care provider satisfaction and experience are prioritized.

• Outcomes are as good as or better than traditional models of care delivery.

• Payment supports its deployment.

 

During the pandemic, telehealth delivered essential health care to people when other routes were not possible. After the pandemic, we need to support and sustain telehealth’s ability to continue to deliver that essential health care. Patients’ good health depends on it.