Telehealth visits accounted for approximately 30% of total outpatient visits early in the COVID-19 pandemic, with uptake varying among specialties and by patient characteristics, according to research published in Health Affairs.
“In response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, telemedicine use grew dramatically within a matter of weeks,” Sadiq Y. Patel, PhD, National Institute of Mental Health postdoctoral research fellow in the department of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, and colleagues wrote. “After years of slow adoption, many clinicians used telemedicine for the first time to limit patient and staff exposure to the virus.”