Medical Economics: How primary care used telehealth to keep treating patients during the pandemic
According to a Primary Care Collaborative (PCC) report, primary care physicians quickly pivoted to telehealth at the beginning of the pandemic. In April 2020, the number of clinicians reporting that their patients were unable to access telehealth services due to lack of equipment or broadband issues fell from 72 percent to 65 percent, meaning more patients were gaining access to telehealth. By the end of May, this number dropped to 29 percent. In March 2020, 60 percent of clinicians said they didn’t use telehealth, but by mid-April, that number had fallen to only 14 percent. The data shows that primary care was able to quickly move to virtual visits but had scarce resources to maintain it at the time.