Telehealth & Virtual Service Delivery

Telehealth services expanded rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data from the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey (HPS) in 2021, this Issue Brief analyzes national trends in telehealth utilization across all payers and examines how use of video-enabled vs. audio-only telehealth services differ across patient populations.

This research report examines changes in Medicare fee-for-service Part B visits and use of telehealth in 2020 during the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) by beneficiary characteristics, provider specialty, and location. The analysis found that Medicare in-person visits dropped while telehealth visits increased significantly at the start of the pandemic.

States have embraced Medicaid telehealth flexibilities during the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE), enhancing beneficiary access to services delivered via telehealth. This Issue Brief examines state Medicaid telehealth coverage and policies before and after the COVID-19 PHE was declared in January 2020.Related Products

Focus groups with a small sample of program participants across a range of human services programs in Fall 2020 captured the perspectives of people served to better understand the perceived strengths and limitations of virtual services.

The COVID-19 pandemic drove a large and rapid transition from in-person human service delivery to virtual approaches. Measuring the implementation and outcomes of virtual human services in a timely way is crucial to understanding the challenges and successes for a variety of participants across programs and services.

Interviews with program administrators and frontline workers across a range of human services programs early in the COVID-19 pandemic provided key takeaways to help promote effective, accessible, and equitable virtual service delivery.

Interviews with program administrators and frontline workers across a range of human services programs early in the COVID-19 pandemic offered rich information about how well virtual service delivery worked for different types of participants.

Interviews with program administrators and frontline workers across a range of human services programs early in the COVID-19 pandemic provided great insight into the tradeoffs and relative advantages of choosing virtual platforms to administer services from.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many human services programs rapidly shifted their service delivery from primarily or exclusively in person to mostly or entirely virtual (via phone, video call, text, email, etc.) with varying degrees of perceived success. Some services (e.g., emergency shelter, distribution of food/diapers) simply must be administered in person.

This ASPE issue brief examines changes in Medicare fee-for-service primary care visits and use of telehealth at the start of the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE). This brief seeks to address the issue of how and whether the Medicare telehealth flexibilities introduced to address the COVID-19 pandemic may have helped maintain access to primary health care during the PHE.