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Despite a favorable regulatory climate, just 15% of physicians are using telehealth in their practices, according to new research in the December issue of the journal Health Affairs.
The research, gleaned from a nationwide physician database by researchers at the American Medical Association, is the latest to show that use of telehealth, also known as telemedicine, isn’t yet a standard part of the U.S. healthcare system.
“ In 2016, 15.4% of physicians worked in practices that used telemedicine for a wide spectrum of patient interactions , including e-visits as well as diagnoses made by radiologists who used telemedicine to store and forward data,” Carol Kane and Kurt Gillis of the American Medical Association’s division of economic and health policy research wrote in Health Affairs. “In the same year, 11.2% of physicians worked in practices that used telemedicine for interactions between physicians and health care professionals.”
The report in Health Affairs follows a report in JAMA last week by researchers from Harvard University that described access to physicians via telehealth as “uncommon” despite laws passed in more than 30 states requiring health insurance coverage and payments to virtual medical care providers.
The mounting research comes as telehealth companies like American Well, MDLive and Teladoc Health and an array of startups sign deals with commercial health insurance companies, offering their subscribers access to physicians via smart phone, tablet or computer. Employers are also embracing telehealth to make healthcare more convenient for their workers, helping them avoid costly and unnecessary trips to the emergency room or a more expensive in-person visit to a physician’s office.
For their analysis in Health Affairs, the AMA’s Kane and Gillis used data from the AMA’s 2016 physician practice benchmark survey which draws doctor responses from across the country.
Whether doctors use telehealth technolgy may have to do with the size of the practice with physicians in larger medical groups and at hospitals more likely to use telehealth for patient care and in interactions with other healthcare professionals.
“(Telehealth) use for patient interactions ranged from 8.2% among physicians in the smallest practice size category to 26.5% among physicians in the largest (at least fifty physicians),” AMA researchers Gillis and Kane wrote. “This suggests that despite regulatory and legislative changes to encourage the use of telemedicine, the financial burden of implementing it may be a continuing barrier for small practices.”
But telehealth companies say they continue to see unprecedented growth by doctor practices, patients and between healthcare providers.
Teladoc said “visit growth continues to outpace access growth, with visits growing at a 63%+ cumulative annual growth rate.”
“Without a doubt, patients are learning when and how to go virtual first,” Teladoc said in a statement. “When you dive further into physician use, there has been significant growth in hospital and health system use of telehealth in just the past year. The number of facilities having their first telehealth roll-out continues to increase, and established programs are adding more and more use cases for how they can fully leverage telehealth.”
MDLive compared the trend of consumer use of telehealth to the early days of online banking, travel and dating. All are now part of the mainstream and continue to grow.
“MDLive has grown the amount of medical online visits by nearly 75% in 2018 compared to the same period in 2017,” MDLive CEO Rich Berner said. “A key factor in this growth: when we are providing care nationally, on this scale, it is easier to control cost and quality across all clinicians and practices, and that control and transparency is exactly what today’s consumers demand.”
