Telehealth Patient Volume Skyrocketed 4,000% in Pandemic

A new report from S&P Global says that telehealth patient volume increased 3,000 to 4,000 percent during the early months of the COVID-19 outbreak and usage remains high as local governments try to ease communities back into pre-pandemic conditions.

The firm said the numbers show the durability of virtual health care, largely consisting of patients consulting with care providers via video or phone, but are uncertain as to how long the trend will continue since patients will want to return to in-person care.

Peter Antall, chief medical officer for the telehealth provider Amwell, said in an interview with S&P Global that providers that rarely employed remote care options prior to the pandemic now do it all the time.

“As we got into March and April, we saw growth like nobody could have ever predicted or planned for,” Antall told S&P Global. “It was just remarkable.”

The report also said that the government temporarily waived a long list of Medicare payment and coverage regulations to spur greater use of telehealth, also known as telemedicine.

Shabana Khan, director of child and adolescent telepsychiatry for NYU Langone Health, an academic medical center in New York City told S&P Global that changes such as increasing the number of services covered by Medicare, paying for virtual care at the same rate as in-person care, and letting doctors treat patients across state lines without requiring a new license have all spurred the use of telemedicine.

Khan added that NYU Langone was in the epicenter of the US pandemic and saw roughly 7,000 video visits per day during the peak of the crisis, with about 100,000 video visits in April, compared to the roughly 300 pre-pandemic visits.

But some who spoke to S&P were unsure how long the trend would continue as coronavirus restrictions ease.

“[Telehealth will] probably be a much larger role in the U.S. healthcare system than it was previously,” said Ateev Mehrotra, a professor of healthcare policy at Harvard. “But I don’t think it’s going to grow in leaps and bounds that quickly.”

Antall said that decline is likely to vary across geographic and service lines, however, Amwell hasn’t determined where the variations will come.

The temporary telehealth regulations are set to expire on July 25. According to S&P, the current question in the industry is whether the regulatory changes will become permanent after that.

S&P reported that 30 senators signed onto a June 15 letter to Senate leaders asking for the temporary telehealth provisions outlined in previous coronavirus pandemic legislation to be made permanent.

Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said at a June 17 hearing, “I suspect we’re talking about the biggest change in healthcare delivery in a long time, maybe ever.”