Mental health care still majority of telehealth visits
Abstract: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M24-0137
URL goes live when the embargo lifts
An analysis of the 2021 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) found that while only 9.6% of health care visits took place via telehealth, 43.2% of those visits were to psychiatrists. The analysis is published in Annals of Internal Medicine.
Researchers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) conducted an analysis of 232,024 health care visits to describe telehealth use using data from the 2021 MEPS, a nationally representative survey of the civilian noninstitutionalized population and their clinicians. They found that only 9.6% of health care visits took place via telehealth. The data showed that 43.2% to 54.1% of mental health (depending on clinician type), 6.1% of primary care, and 7.8% of specialty physician visits took place via telehealth. During the timeframe studied, the percentage of telehealth visits declined 44% to 49% for non–mental health visits and 18% to 19% for mental health visits, suggesting that use of telehealth after the public health emergency peak has returned closer to pre-emergency levels for non–mental health clinicians.
Media contacts: For an embargoed PDF, please contact Angela Collom at acollom@acponline.org. To speak with the corresponding author, Sandra L. Decker, PhD, please contact Sandra.Decker@ahrq.hhs.gov.
