Government Accountability Office: National Strategy Needed to Guide Federal Efforts to Reduce Digital Divide The Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report on broadband, which recommends the White House to develop and implement a national broadband strategy with clear roles, goals, objectives, and performance measures to support better management of fragmented, overlapping federal broadband programs [...]
Centers for Disease Control & Prevention: National Health Statistics Report Shows Telemedicine Use in Children Age 0-17 The CDC found that, in the second half of 2020, only 14.1 percent of children used telehealth due to the pandemic, but use was higher among those with asthma, a developmental condition, or a disability. In total, about 12.6 [...]
Health Affairs: Medicare and Telehealth – Delivering on Innovation’s Promise for Equity, Quality, Access and Sustainability The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly changed health care. Policy makers and health care leaders must evaluate the lessons learned from the pandemic and leverage telehealth innovations with an eye toward how such changes can advance health equity; drive high-quality, high-value, [...]
On March 17, 2022, the HHS Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released a new report examining the use of telehealth services in Medicare during the first year of the pandemic, declaring that telehealth was critical during this time period for Medicare beneficiaries. The report also looks at the growth of telehealth services, the types [...]
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 [...]
Arkansas Center for Health Improvement: Report: Telemedicine Utilization Increased 30-Fold During First 12 Months of COVID-19 Pandemic 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 [...]
The Alliance keeps a tracker of HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) telehealth-related work plan items. Please see below a list of pending and released OIG reports. View other federal data releases here. Reports in Development Title Report Number Expected Release Description Audit of Medicare Part B Opioid Use [...]
HHS released new CMS data and an Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) report of Medicare telehealth utilization in 2020 and early 2021. Overall, nearly 53 million virtual visits occurred in traditional Medicare in 2020, compared to about 840,000 in 2019. Of those, nearly all (92%) of visits occurred in patients’ homes, which [...]
Medicaid OIG Reports – To-date, OIG has released parts 1 and 2 of a three-part report on tele-behavioral health and Medicaid. Below we summarize the key findings, particularly noting successful findings on access and cost. HHS OIG currently has eight different national audits, evaluations and inspections of telemedicine services under the Medicare and Medicaid programs – [...]
Medicare OIG Report – Most Medicare beneficiaries received telehealth services only from providers with whom they had an established relationship Patients are seeing their own providers – Most beneficiaries received telehealth services from providers with whom they had an established relationship. Notably, 84 percent of beneficiaries received telehealth services only from providers with whom they had an established [...]