Telehealth Research, Reports and Surveys
Forbes: As Telehealth Rises Due To Covid-19, Doctors’ Influence Wanes, New Survey Shows (12/28) – According to a survey
conducted by Oliver Wyman, telehealth is now a common feature of many Americans’ health care experience. More than one-third of survey respondents said they’d had a video visit with a health care provider at some point during the pandemic—triple the percentage in a 2018 version of this survey. For the vast majority (85 percent), it was the first time they’d tried it. Among those who have used telehealth, most were happy with it. More than one-quarter (29 percent) said their video visit was much better than a traditional office visit and 38 percent said it was about the same.
mHealth Intelligence: How Telehealth Will Continue its Evolution Beyond Pandemic Response (12/27) – A survey
conducted by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHiME) found about 26 percent of organizations, including acute, ambulatory and post-acute care facilities, reported that more than a quarter of their patients had used telehealth as compared with the 32 percent of organizations that reported the same in 2020. This indicates that though telehealth will remain a key part of the care continuum, providers are still in the process of figuring out how best to integrate it with other types of care delivery.
NIH National Library of Medicine: Telehealth adaptation of perinatal mental health mother-infant group programming for the COVID-19 pandemic (12/25)
– The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing isolation stressed pregnant and postpartum women and their families pervasively. A new study, that compares 2019 in-person and 2020 telehealth services during the period from mid-March through mid-December in each year, found that the Maternal Postpartum Peer Support Group participation increased with the transition to telehealth, with 27 individuals with over 100 group-based visits in 2020. Twenty-five mother–infant postpartum pairs initially enrolled in the 12-week multicomponent Mother–Infant Therapy Group (M-ITG) during 2019 in-person services, and 16 completed the program (36 percent non-completion rate). The authors highlighted the importance of increased coverage of telehealth even after the pandemic ends, since telehealth may be one option to increase access to populations who have public insurance and offer earlier intervention, which is critical during the first year of life.
Doc Wire News: The Opportunities and Challenges of Telemedicine during COVID-19 Pandemic (12/23) – A new study found that telemedicine provides safe, affordable, and convenient medical and education assistance. Throughout the pandemic, telemedicine provided an alternative platform to medical care and eliminated direct contact of medical workers with patients. The authors found that new laws and regulations are needed to regulate responsibility in the field of remote treatment, as well as guidelines regarding the use of crowdsourced disease monitoring in addition to traditional epidemiological surveillance systems.
Rheumatology and Therapy Journal: Patient-Reported Nausea and Fatigue Related to Methotrexate: A Prospective, Self-Controlled Study in the ArthritisPower® Registry (12/20) – A new study found that the use of digital technology helps assess medication-related symptoms. Researchers found that nearly two-thirds of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and psoriatic arthritis (PsA) patients experience methotrexate side effects (including fatigue and nausea) and that for many, the experience of such symptoms is much more intense in the one to two days after each weekly dose is taken. The authors concluded that digital remote patient monitoring presents an opportunity to detect and address medication tolerability in real time.
Arkansas Center for Health Improvement: Report: Telemedicine Utilization Increased 30-Fold During First 12 Months of COVID-19 Pandemic (12/20) – The Arkansas Center for Health Improvement (ACHI) assessed telemedicine trends from March 2020 through April 2021 for Arkansas, with trends reflecting findings similar to the CMS Medicare Telemedicine Snapshot report during the pandemic. April 2020 represented the month with the highest utilization of telemedicine services, with slightly reduced but still high utilization through the summer months into early fall 2020. Despite a reduction in telemedicine claims utilization from November 2020 through April 2021, telehealth claims were still up 67 percent in April 2021 compared to March 2020. Given the increased utilization of telemedicine services, both the state and federal government have made permanent some of the telemedicine rule changes instituted in response to the pandemic.
mHealth Intelligence: Outcomes for Virtual Prenatal, Postpartum Care Similar to In-Person Visits (12/14) – According to a Health Science Reports study, rapid telehealth implementation during the COVID-19 pandemic was proven to be feasible for underserved populations at a clinic in Massachusetts, in particular for prenatal and postpartum care services. For prenatal care, telehealth accounted for 57 percent of all visits of patients who were between 22 and 25 weeks along. Around half of the postpartum patients had at least one telehealth visit, with 52 percent of patients attending a virtual visit for both the two-week and six-week postpartum checkups. The researchers also stressed the importance of audio-only telehealth for underserved populations who may not have access to adequate internet or devices with camera capabilities.
NCBI: Real-World Outcomes in Cystic Fibrosis Telemedicine Clinical Care in a Time of a Global Pandemic (12/10) – A new study found that telemedicine increases access to care for adults with cystic fibrosis living in regions remote to a cystic fibrosis specialty center, with 95 percent of patients with cystic fibrosis having access to telemedicine. Telemedicine accounted for 64 percent of encounters, hybrid visits accounted for 28 percent of encounters and in-person visits accounted for seven percent of encounters.
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