Federal Data

Office of Inspector General (OIG): Telehealth Provided to Medicare Beneficiaries Complied with Medicare Requirements From March 2020 through November 2020 (audit period), Medicare Part B paid approximately $10.3 billion for Evaluation and Management (E/M) services, including telehealth services, provided to Medicare enrollees nationwide. There were concerns that the telehealth expansion increased the risk of [...]

Annals of Internal Medicine: Trends in Psychological Distress and Outpatient Mental Health Care of Adults During the COVID-19 Era Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons conducted a study, which found that the rate of those with “serious psychological distress” received outpatient mental health at a diminished [...]

BMC Psychiatry: Changes in Mental Health Services in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic A shift to telecommunication technologies had a significant impact on patients and care providers’ experiences of mental health care. This review aimed to identify changes in mental health services for patients in response to the pandemic and understand the impact of [...]

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): Telemedicine Use Among Physicians by Physician Specialty: United States, 2021 A CDC study found that primary care and medical specialists were more likely to be satisfied with telemedicine technology compared with surgical specialists. More medical specialists (27.4 percent) used telemedicine for 50 percent of their patient visits [...]

Atrium Health: Atrium Health Extends Reach with Virtual Care to Improve Health Atrium Health had a head start on leveraging virtual care tools to streamline care when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. In its report, Atrium detail how they’ve developed more than 30 virtual programs that streamline access to care, reduce wait times and improve [...]

JAMA Health Forum: Characteristics of Mental Health Specialists Who Shifted Their Practice Entirely to Telemedicine While most mental health specialists have in-person and telemedicine visits, some have transitioned to fully virtual practice, perhaps for greater work-life flexibility (including avoiding commuting) and eliminating expenses of maintaining a physical clinic. This study found that, in 2022, [...]

The New England Journal of Medicine: Wearable Digital Health Technologies for Monitoring in Cardiovascular Medicine This review article presents a three-part true-life clinical vignette hat illustrates how digital health technology can aid providers caring for patients with cardiovascular disease. Although the uses of remote patient monitoring may be broad and could include management of [...]

Cadence: 2023 Outcomes Report Alliance member, Cadence, released its 2023 Outcomes Report. Cadence’s RPM program saw: 2x increase in the number of hypertension patients at goal blood pressure 50 percent reduction in cost of care for hypertension patients 12x increase of patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction on all four pillars of GDMT 43 percent of type [...]

Annals of Internal Medicine: A New Equilibrium for Telemedicine: Prevalence of In-Person, Video-Based, and Telephone-Based Care in the Veterans Health Administration, 2019–2023 Though audio-only telehealth utilization has largely returned to pre-pandemic levels among veterans, video-based telehealth accounts for 11 percent to 12 percent of outpatient care, a 2,300 percent jump from pre-pandemic levels. Researchers [...]

Department of Veterans Affairs (VA): Improving Access to Surgical Care: Safety, Efficacy, and Satisfaction With Postoperative Telehealth A quarter of US Veterans reside in rural communities and are significantly older than their urban counterparts. Providing timely access to care is especially important in this older, independent and medically complex cohort. Routine telehealth for low [...]