Health Affairs December 6, 2022
Use of telemedicine in primary care soared in the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and remains well above pre-pandemic levels. In the US, a major enabler of this shift is equal reimbursement across video, audio, and in-person visits. Policy makers must now choose whether to extend these COVID-19-era telemedicine policies. A key decision is whether audio-only telemedicine should be covered and if so, whether it should retain parity with video-based telemedicine. The dominance of video over audio in the US suggests that an appropriate policy strategy would be to not reimburse for audio-only telemedicine or reimburse at markedly lower levels. However, US policy makers would be wise to look internationally first—where experience suggests that audio-only can be an effective...