Title

Impact of telehealth on health care resource utilization during the COVID-19 pandemic

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-18-2022

Publication Title

Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research (JCER)

First Page

301

Last Page

309

DOI

https://doi.org/10.2217/cer-2021-0242

Additional Publication URL

https://doi.org/10.2217/cer-2021-0242

Abstract

Aim: To assess healthcare utilization (HCRU) among patients with incident telehealth visit during the COVID-19 pandemic. Materials & methods: Retrospective pre-post analyses was conducted using HealthJump data. Adults continuously enrolled with an incident telehealth visit between Feb and April 2020 were identified. Demographics, clinical characteristics, proportion of patients with ≥1 HCRU visits and post-index trends in HCRU were analyzed. Results: Sample constituted 2799 patients, 60.34% female and 46.23% white with mean age 59.70. Significant increase in patients with outpatient visits (5.36%, p < 0.005; only established), non-face-to-face visits (99.50%, p < 0.005) and prescription use (12.86%, p < 0.005) was reported. Conclusion: Among patients utilizing telehealth during COVID-19 pandemic, HCRU changed significantly. Better deployment policies and adoption techniques of telehealth could potentially act as a strong tool to revolutionize the healthcare delivery, with or without the pandemic.

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