COVID-19 Survey: Doctors Like Telehealth and Want to Continue Using It

A survey of roughly 1,600 healthcare providers finds that almost 70 percent are motivated to use more telehealth because of the experiences they’ve had during the coronavirus pandemic – and more than half say their outlook has improved because of connected health.

The survey, conducted in July and August by a workgroup of the COVID-19 Healthcare Coalition – comprised of the American Medical Association, American Telemedicine Association, Change Healthcare, Digital Medicine Society, Mayo Clinic, Massachusetts Health Quality Partners, MassChallenge Health Tech and MITRE – adds to the effort to continue telehealth expansion by making permanent many of the emergency measures designed to help providers during the crisis.

More than three-quarters of those survey respondents, in fact, said telehealth helped them to provide quality care for their patients.

“The strong support shown for telehealth, as evidenced in these results, reinforces the knowledge that telehealth is critical to how we deliver healthcare today,” Steve Ommen, medical director of the Mayo Clinic’s Center for Connected Care and one of the study’s investigators, said in a press release issued this morning. “The use of telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic highlights its importance in care delivery. Its continued use will be instrumental in connecting to patients everywhere.”

The 48-question survey also highlights the challenges faced in telehealth adoption. Almost three-quarters said telehealth programs won’t be sustainable beyond the current emergency unless providers are reimbursed better for using the technology. More than 64 percent pointed to challenges faced by patients, from access to technology to broadband availability to digital literacy.

Some 58 percent, meanwhile, cited a lack of integration with the electronic health record as a barrier to adoption. In a separate question, 58 percent of urban providers, 55 percent of suburban providers and 68 percent of rural providers said they couldn’t access telehealth directly from the EHR.

On the “good news” side, roughly 80 percent of respondents reported that telemedicine platforms and mHealth tools improved the timeliness of care for their patients, and 60 percent said telehealth had improved their patients’ health.

In a nod to one of bigger trends coming out of the COVID-19 crisis, some 11 percent of respondents said they’re using remote patient monitoring platforms to monitor patients in their homes. That percentage is expected to increase as more health systems look to expand home-based care programs for not only COVID-19 patients but those with chronic conditions and post-discharged care plans.

To that end, more than three-quarters of respondents said they’d like to continue using telehealth for chronic disease management, about 70 percent want to use these platforms for medical management, about 62 percent cited care coordination, about 55 percent cited preventative care, about half cited hospital or ED follow-up, about 44 percent cited specialty care and roughly 45 percent cited mental or behavioral health.

“COVID-19 has allowed telehealth to prove its value as a safe, effective and necessary care delivery option that can provide quality care to patients when and where they need it,” ATA CEO Ann Mond Johnson said in the press release. “Telehealth is also helping to address several challenges that have been exacerbated by and will continue long after the pandemic, including a severe provider shortage and a growing gap in access to care for rural communities and our most vulnerable populations. Telehealth did not create these problems but offers a cost-effective solution to a failing healthcare system.”

The survey offered some interesting insights on telehealth and its effect on providers. More than a third of respondents used Zoom to connect with patients during the pandemic, while roughly 30 percent used an audio-only telephone and almost 20 percent used Facetime. A little less than 20 percent, meanwhile, used a telehealth vendor.

More than 90 percent of respondents said they’d been averaging five or less telehealth visits a week prior to the onset of the pandemic in March (roughly 3 percent were averaging more than 20); after that date, about a quarter were averaging 11 to 20 virtual visits a week and almost 40 percent were jumping online more than 20 times a week.

And while care outcomes and timeliness of care are top of mind for providers, close to 50 percent said telehealth has helped to improve the financial health of their practice, and about 55 percent said it has “improved the satisfaction of my work.”

Beyond the numbers, John Halamka, co-chair of the COVID-19 Coalition and president of the Mayo Clinic Platform, said the successes of telehealth during the pandemic are part of a culture change, in which healthcare is responding to an increasingly mobile and motivated consumer who wants access to care when and where it’s convenient for them.

“Patients will expect more virtual care even after we return to the new normal post-vaccination,” he said in the press release.

“How telehealth will be used after the pandemic is in the balance, and no one wants to see new access to telehealth suddenly halted,” added AMA President Susan Bailey, noting the dozens of emergency measures supporting telehealth expansion and coverage that will end with the public health emergency. “The time is now for government officials, physicians, patients and other stakeholders to work together on a solid plan to support telehealth services going forward.”