Since the initial spike in April 2020, telehealth adoption overall has approached up to 17 percent of all outpatient/office visit claims with evaluation and management (E&M) services. Virtual healthcare models and business models are evolving and proliferating, moving from purely “virtual urgent care” to a range of services enabling longitudinal virtual care, integration of telehealth with other virtual health solutions, and hybrid virtual/in-person care models, with the potential to improve consumer experience/convenience, access, outcomes, and affordability.4 Rock Health venture funding database, 2017–21,. Investment in virtual care and digital health more broadly has skyrocketed, fueling further innovation, with 3X the level of venture capitalist digital health investment in 2020 than it had in 2017.But uncertainty still exists as to the fate of other services that may lose their waiver status when the public health emergency ends. Some regulatory changes that facilitated expanded use of telehealth have been made permanent, for example, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ expansion of reimbursable telehealth codes for the 2021 physician fee schedule.Some barriers-such as perceptions of technology security-remain to be addressed to sustain consumer and provider virtual health adoption, and models are likely to evolve to optimize hybrid virtual and in-person care delivery. Perceptions and usage have dropped slightly since the peak in spring 2020. Similarly, consumer and provider attitudes toward telehealth have improved since the pre-COVID-19 era.3 Compile data set, Exhibit 2 (of the original article). This utilization reflects more than two-thirds of what we anticipated as visits that could be virtualized. After an initial spike to more than 32 percent of office and outpatient visits occurring via telehealth in April 2020, utilization levels have largely stabilized, ranging from 13 to 17 percent across all specialties. Telehealth utilization has stabilized at levels 38X higher than before the pandemic.
Our findings include the following insights: It would likely require sustained consumer and clinician adoption and accelerated redesign of care pathways to incorporate virtual modalities.Īs of July 2021, we step back to review the progress of telehealth since the initial COVID-19 spike and to assess implications for telehealth and virtual health 1 We define virtual health as a range of solutions for healthcare provider-patient interactions to occur outside of in-person visits, including telehealth (video/phone), text-based care, e-triage, and remote monitoring.
Approaching this potential level of virtual health is not a foregone conclusion. During the tragedy of the pandemic, telehealth offered a bridge to care, and now offers a chance to reinvent virtual and hybrid virtual/in-person care models, with a goal of improved healthcare access, outcomes, and affordability.Ī year ago, we estimated that up to $250 billion of US healthcare spend could potentially be shifted to virtual or virtually enabled care. This step-change, borne out of necessity, was enabled by these factors: 1) increased consumer willingness to use telehealth, 2) increased provider willingness to use telehealth, 3) regulatory changes enabling greater access and reimbursement.
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