ASPE Report: Medicare Beneficiaries’ Use of Telehealth in 2020: Trends by Beneficiary Characteristics and Location

ASPE Report: Medicare Beneficiaries’ Use of Telehealth in 2020: Trends by Beneficiary Characteristics and Location –

Summary: Telehealth services expanded rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data from the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey (HPS) in 2021, this Issue Brief analyzes national trends in telehealth utilization across all payers and examines how use of video-enabled vs. audio-only telehealth services differ across patient populations. The study finds notable disparities by race, ethnicity, income, age, and insurance status in access to video-enabled telehealth.

KEY POINTS

Telehealth use increased dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, but research suggests that access to telehealth was not equitable across different population subgroups.
This report analyzes data regarding telehealth use from the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey from April to October 2021.
Overall during the study period, we found that one in four respondents (23.1%) reported use of telehealth services in the previous four weeks.
Telehealth use rates were similar(21.1-26.8%) among most demographic subgroups but were much lower among those who were uninsured (9.4%) and young adults ages 18 to 24 (17.6%).
The highest rates of telehealth visits were among those with Medicaid (29.3%) and Medicare (27.4%), Black individuals (26.8%), and those earning less than $25,000 (26.7%).
There were significant disparities among subgroups in terms of audio versus video telehealth use. Among telehealth users, the highest share of visits that utilized video services occurred among young adults ages 18 to 24 (72.5%), those earning at least $100,000 (68.8%), those with private insurance (65.9%), and White individuals (61.9%). Video telehealth rates were lowest among those without a high school diploma (38.1%), adults ages 65 and older (43.5%), and Latino (50.7%), Asian (51.3%) and Black individuals (53.6%).
Policy efforts to ensure equitable access to telehealth, in particular video-enabled telehealth, are needed to ensure that disparities that emerged during the pandemic do not become permanent.