Concord Monitor: Telehealth Prescriptions Should be Available for More Mental Health and Substance Use Patients The New Hampshire Commission to Study Telehealth Services published a report finding that it should be legal for telehealth providers to prescribe certain medications for mental health and substance use disorders without requiring an in-person visit. Data from 2023 [...]
Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE): Understanding the Optimal Balance of Using Telehealth and In-person Services to Support Adults with Serious Mental Illness and Children ASPE published a data brief, which examined access to and use of tele-mental health services among individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) and children with serious emotional disturbance [...]
JAMA Psychiatry: Trends in Outpatient Psychotherapy Among Adults in the US In this cross-sectional study, significant psychotherapy increases occurred for adults with mild or moderate but not serious distress, younger but not older adults, females but not males, college educated but not less than college educated adults, individuals with higher but not lower family [...]
JAMA Network Open: Building the Evidence on Mental Telehealth Care and Health Outcomes An ongoing challenge in observational studies comparing mental health outcomes for in-person vs telehealth care involves ensuring that the patients who use different modalities are similar with respect to both observed and unobserved characteristics. In this commentary piece, Jean Yoon, PhD, MHS, [...]
BMC Primary Care: Primary Care Patients at Risk for Suicide in Mental Health Treatment This study identified barriers and facilitators to engagement in mental health services among primary care patients at risk for suicide to inform the development of strategies to increase engagement. The most identified barriers to mental health care engagement were waitlists, [...]
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Diagnosis, Treatment, and Telehealth Use in Adults In 2023, an estimated 15.5 million U.S. adults had an ADHD diagnosis, approximately one half of whom received their diagnosis in adulthood. Approximately one third of adults with ADHD take stimulant medication; 71.5 percent had difficulty filling their prescription [...]
FAIR Health: Monthly Telehealth Regional Tracker FAIR Health found that in June, telehealth utilization increased nationally and in the West, Northeast and South, but decreased in the Midwest. Nationally, telehealth claim lines rose from 4.82% of medical claim lines in May to 4.89% in June, an increase of 1.5%. In terms of mental health [...]
Health Affairs: Telehealth Delivery By Physician And Practice Characteristics Researchers from Cornell examined 2022 Medicare fee-for-service claims to understand how physician characteristics impacted telehealth use. Researchers found that female physicians, primary care physicians, psychiatrists, and physicians in nonrural practices delivered relatively higher proportions of visits via telehealth. Overall, 23 percent of psychiatrists delivered all [...]
Nature Digital Medicine: Closing the Gap: Addressing Telehealth Disparities Across Specialties in the Sustained Pandemic Era Telehealth has surged as a viable solution to reduce no-shows and improve health care accessibility, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, telehealth disparities and its long-term efficacy across various medical specialties remain understudied. This retrospective analysis examined telehealth use and [...]
Psychotherapy Research: Cohort Study of Engagement in Telehealth Psychotherapy versus In-Person Services This study aimed to compare patient engagement in in-person versus telehealth services in outpatient psychotherapy for mood and anxiety disorders. The study found a 26% increase in the total number of individual psychotherapy sessions attended when the clinics transitioned to telehealth services. [...]