A large-scale study recently published in The Journal of Climate Change and Health found that an increase in telehealth use in the Pacific Northwest corresponded to a dramatic decrease in transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions.

The study – a collaboration among researchers from Northwest Permanente, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School – examined six years of outpatient care at Kaiser Permanente Northwest, which serves more than 600,000 people in Oregon and Washington.  

"Prior to the pandemic, despite rising total visit volume, transportation-associated emissions were already declining due to a greater proportion of telehealth visits," observed the researchers.  

WHY IT MATTERS  

As the study notes, the healthcare sector is a "significant source" of greenhouse gas emissions. From 2010 to 2018, emissions from the U.S. healthcare industry increased by 6 percent.

Although many of those emissions arise directly from facilities or indirectly from the supply chain, researchers note that patient transportation to clinics also plays a role in healthcare's carbon footprint.   

"To date, there are no large-scale studies of emissions reductions due to telehealth across an entire ambulatory system of a regional healthcare system in the United States, nor any studies showing the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare-associated [greenhouse gas] emissions as a result of rapid telehealth adoption," they explained.  

Team members looked back at the total number of in-person and telehealth visits from 2015 through 2020. They calculated the average distance between patients' home addresses and their assigned primary care clinics, and used Oregon Department of Transportation data about how individuals run errands to estimate what percentage of in-person trips were taken by car.   

They also assumed that telehealth visits replaced in-person visits on a 1:1 ratio (which may not be true, as other studies about downstream care have shown).   

Overall, in-person outpatient visits had increased at 1.5% per year through 2019 – but declined by 46.2% in 2020.   

Meanwhile, telehealth visits – which had already been increasing – jumped in 2020 by 108.5%.  

Researchers calculated that greenhouse gas emissions from patient travel due to transportation for primary care, specialty care and mental health visits fell from 19,659 tons CO2-eq in 2019 to 10,537 tons CO2-eq in 2020.  

"This reduction is primarily due to increased use of telehealth services as opposed to a decline in total annual visits during the pandemic and is evidenced by the total number of visits in 2020 being greater than prior years that had much larger total emissions," said researchers.  

"Nor is this reduction attributable to changes in fuel efficiency or transportation mode share over time, which are likely minimal on this time scale and were not modeled in this analysis," they added. The researchers argue that reductions in transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions "greatly eclipse" smaller increases associated with the use of computer equipment.  

The study has limitations: In addition to the 1:1 assumption mentioned above, researchers also pointed out that some visits would not have been conducted at a primary care clinic. In addition, they acknowledge that the Oregon DOT estimates may not represent medical appointment visits accurately.  

Still, "our study likely underestimates emissions reductions as we did not account for decreased commuting by healthcare providers conducting telehealth visits from home," the researchers wrote.   

"Furthermore, the environmental benefit of telehealth may not be limited to reductions in transportation-associated emissions if increased virtual care permits healthcare systems to care for more patients without increasing outpatient clinic space," they added.  

THE LARGER TREND  

Given the effect of climate change on the environment – and, in turn, on wellness, particularly for already vulnerable communities – many healthcare experts have called for action, with some noting the role that digital tools can play.  

In addition to preventative measures such as those outlined in the study, digital health tools may also help in the shorter term with regard to the consequences of climate change.  

When a winter storm tore through the southern United States earlier this year, for example, clinicians were able to keep seeing patients from their own homes.

"If there are natural disasters, which we're seeing more and more of, because of global warming, we're hoping we'll be able to continue to provide care [via telehealth] through more weather events – like the freeze, like the hurricanes, and things of that nature," said William Kiefer, CEO of Chambers Health, a community-based system in Texas, in March.  

ON THE RECORD  

"If the U.S. healthcare system were to maintain or expand upon current levels of telehealth utilization, additional reductions in [greenhouse gas] emissions would potentially be achieved through impacts on practice design," said researchers in the new study. "Ambulatory visit carbon intensity would be an effective way to measure these changes."

Kat Jercich is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Twitter: @kjercich
Email: kjercich@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.