Telehealth Should Be Expanded—If It Can Address Today's Health Care Challenges

Telehealth Should Be Expanded—If It Can Address Today’s Health Care Challenges

Health Affairs September 23, 2020
Shantanu Agrawal, Tejal Gandhi

Telehealth use has achieved what Stephen Jay Gould, in evolutionary terms, called punctuated equilibrium. It has emerged from relative stasis to rapid growth, and the main reason for this change is the use of telehealth as a primary response to COVID-19. By April, nearly half of all Medicare primary care visits were telehealth encounters, a level consistent with health care encounters more broadly. A central policy discussion now is whether temporary measures in Medicare incentivizing the use of telehealth should be made permanent to ensure telehealth retains a niche in the publicly funded health care ecosystem.

Uptake of telehealth is likely to persist to some degree. The main question is how to integrate this modality...

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Topics: CMS, Digital Health, Govt Agencies, Health IT, Insurance, Patient / Consumer, Provider, Technology, Telehealth

2020-09-23T22:07:54-04:00

Telehealth Should Be Expanded—If It Can Address Today’s Health Care Challenges

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