Telehealth Use Dropped Significantly Between 2020 and 2021

A FAIR Health white paper described that telehealth use has evolved extensively in the last several years, with use rates dropping between 2020 and 2021 dropping and its application increasing in urgent care centers.

With a mission of increasing the level of clarity surrounding healthcare costs and health insurance information, FAIR Health is an independent nonprofit organization containing a large collection of private healthcare claims data.

Fair Health released a white paper containing FH Healthcare Indicators, which are defined as trends and patterns in how patients receive healthcare that consider factors such as use, geographics, demographics, diagnoses, procedures, and costs.

In this report, Fair Health described that although national telehealth use grew 5,017 percent nationally between 2016 and 2021, it declined 76 percent between 2020 and 2021.

Regarding locations, telehealth use increased by 14 percent in urgent care centers, decreased by 7 percent in ambulatory surgery centers, and decreased by 15 percent in  emergency rooms (ERs) between 2020 and 2021. Among these locations in 2021, telehealth had 3.7 percent of all medical claim lines nationally.

The report also detailed that in 2021, there were a higher number of claim line submissions for females than males. Also, during this year, COVID-19 appeared on the list of most common diagnostic categories in retail clinics, urgent care centers, telehealth, and ERs for patients over the age of 22.

Throughout 2021, the highest median charge amount for  new patient outpatient visits in offices, urgent care centers, and retail clinics was $240. The median charge for offices was $226.

When reporting changes in costs and facilities from May 2012 to November 2022, researchers considered six procedure categories: professional evaluation and management, hospital E&M, medicine, surgery, pathology and laboratory, and radiology.

During the defined period of November 2021 to November 2022, the report gathered new pieces of insight surrounding telehealth use from these six procedure categories.

During this time, hospital E&Ms had a six percent increase in charge amount which was the greatest among all categories. Surgery and pathology and laboratory, however, each had the largest increase in the allowed amount index, four percent. Professional E&Ms had the least noticeable increase in the allowed amount index. Among all categories, radiology was the only one that remained flat in the charge amount index. For medicine, the charge among index rose by two percent, and the allowed amount index rose by three percent.

FAIR Health researchers expected that this data and future reports would prove useful in shaping telehealth legislation and strategy in the public and private sectors.

"We hope that this new edition of FH Healthcare Indicators and FH Medical Price Index, like those in previous years, continues to inform decision making throughout the healthcare sector by payors, providers, government officials, policy makers, academic researchers and others," said FAIR Health President Robin Gelburd, in a press release.

Previous research surrounding telehealth use in 2021 has reported similar findings.

Released in February 2022, a brief from the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker found that telehealth use dropped significantly in 2021.

Compiling data on telehealth use between March 2019 and August 2021, the brief provided researchers with insight into both pre- and mid-pandemic patient use. Researchers noted that prior to the pandemic, telehealth made up less than 1 percent of outpatient visits. As the pandemic struck, this share rose to 13 percent, but dropped to 8 percent in 2021.

There were differences in telehealth use among various age groups. In contrast, statistics surrounding the patient location of residency and gender did not carry many variations.