Join us, for the 474 millionth time, as we gaze back into the early days of the pandemic. Many physicians had temporarily shuttered their offices, prompting patients to turn en masse to the untested realm of telemedicine. Once they did, everything changed, immediately and forever.
Or at least for a few weeks, anyway. Once doctors started seeing patients in-person again — and in retrospect, the closings were more limited than initially advertised — telemedicine visits tumbled to a level above where they were in February 2020 but well below their COVID-era highs.
Ever since, most narratives around the use of telemedicine in the U.S. have prominently featured the word “plateau.” To assess the validity of such conclusions, a group of researchers set about analyzing data from 5,437 patients compiled in the 2022 Health Information National Trends Survey. Their goal: to determine which patients continued to use telemedicine even after the resumption of in-person doctor visits.
Surprisingly, the researchers found that many patients, including those with profound healthcare needs, remain regular telemedicine users. It was a vital option during the worst of the pandemic and it’s a vital option now. Here’s how the patient demographics break down.
Source: “Patient Characteristics and Telemedicine Use in the U.S., 2022,” JAMA Network Open, March 22, 2024.
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