Are telehealth visits for pediatric primary care associated with higher rates of health care utilization?

Medical Economics November 22, 2024
Austin Littrell

Telehealth visits are a useful vehicle for pediatric health care delivery, although they shouldn’t be a universal substitute for in-person visits, says new study.

More than 12 million children rely on telehealth each year in the United States, according to a National Health Statistics report. Despite this, studies supporting telehealth as an effective vehicle for health care in pediatric populations have been relatively scarce since its emergence during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, researchers looked to determine whether pediatric primary care telehealth visits were associated with more medication prescribing, imaging and laboratory ordering, in-person follow-up visits, emergency department (ED) visits or hospitalizations, compared with in-person visits. Research out of Kaiser Permanente Northern California (KPNC), published in the Journal of the American...

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