New research suggests that while telehealth adoption has slowed since the peak of the pandemic, it has stabilized at a level dramatically higher than before COVID showed its face.
According to research by McKinsey, since the initial emergence of COVID-19, overall telehealth adoption has settled that 13% to 17%. (Interestingly, my colleague John Lynn predicted these telehealth levels almost exactly in his October piece on the subject. Go team!)
This might not sound like a high volume of use until you consider that this i 38 times higher than before the pandemic hit.
Current numbers still represent a big fall from mid-2020. Telehealth use for office visits outpatient care peaked in April 2020, at a level that was 78 times higher than February of that year. Nonetheless, demand seems to have stabilized at a much higher level than some critics predicted.
Meanwhile, researchers who connected with consumers found that many are quite interested in accessing telehealth services. Roughly 40% of respondents said they will continue telehealth going forward, a big leap upward from the 11% using telehealth before COVID-19.
Specialties that posted the highest level of telehealth adoption include mental health (50%), substance use (30%), endocrinology (17%) and rheumatology (17%). It’s not clear whether other specialties will make more use of telehealth in the future, or what the barriers are to their doing so.
Not only that, between 40% and 60% of respondents were interested in a broader set of virtual health solutions such as a “digital front door” or a lower-cost virtual-first health plan. If they want this kind of service they are likely to have access to it. VCs invested $14.1 billion in digital health in 2020, twice the investment in 2019 ($8.2 billion).
Despite the amount of money chasing solutions in this area, things may not happen quickly. As the report points out, a gap has historically existed between consumers’ interest in digital health and actual usage. Providers will need to focus on creating a seamless consumer interface, breaking down silos separating virtual and in-person care and improve data integration and insights to make things happen.
McKinsey, too, seems bullish about the future of digital health solutions, estimating that the $250 billion of US healthcare spend could be shifted to virtual or virtually-enabled care, though the report notes that there are obstacles that could prevent this future from being realized. To make this happen, consumers and clinicians would need to keep adopting the technology providers will need to accelerate the redesign of care pathways to incorporate virtual care models, the consulting firm said.
It certainly helps that some regulatory changes supporting the expansion of telehealth have become permanent. For example, CMS has expanded the number of reimbursable telehealth codes for the 2021 physician fee schedule, and in where CMS goes, commercial health plans usually follow. That being said, the report notes that it’s still not clear what will happen with other services, which may lose the waiver status from the public health emergency dies down. We’re seeing signs of these waivers expiring which could cause real problems for those organizations that want to do telehealth.
Also, much will depend on how successful providers are in developing new models of care for the digital world, including longitudinal virtual care, integration telehealth and other virtual health solutions and hybrid virtual/in-person care models.
Bottom line, telehealth and virtual care adoption have clearly been transformed by the pandemic. Despite new levels of interest by consumers, the road to adoption is clearly rocky, and there’s still a lot of uncertainty as to how the industry can shift into virtual mode, but seems likely that telehealth and virtual care use will continue to expand.
