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Pandemic-Triggered Adoption of Telehealth in Underserved Communities: Descriptive Study of Pre- and Postshutdown Trends

BACKGROUND: The adoption of telehealth services has been a challenge in rural communities. The reasons for the slow adoption of such technology-driven services have been attributed to social norms, health care policies, and a lack of infrastructure to support the delivery of services. However, the C...

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Autores principales: Xu, Pei, Hudnall, Matthew, Zhao, Sidi, Raja, Uzma, Parton, Jason, Lewis, Dwight
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: JMIR Publications 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9290332/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35786564
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/38602
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author Xu, Pei
Hudnall, Matthew
Zhao, Sidi
Raja, Uzma
Parton, Jason
Lewis, Dwight
author_facet Xu, Pei
Hudnall, Matthew
Zhao, Sidi
Raja, Uzma
Parton, Jason
Lewis, Dwight
author_sort Xu, Pei
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The adoption of telehealth services has been a challenge in rural communities. The reasons for the slow adoption of such technology-driven services have been attributed to social norms, health care policies, and a lack of infrastructure to support the delivery of services. However, the COVID-19 pandemic–related shutdown of in-person health care services resulted in the usage of telehealth services as a necessity rather than a choice. The pandemic also fast-tracked some needed legislation to allow medical cost reimbursement for remote examination and health care services. As services return to normalcy, it is important to examine whether the usage of telehealth services during the period of a shutdown has changed any of the trends in the acceptance of telehealth as a reliable alternative to traditional in-person health care services. OBJECTIVE: Our aim was to explore whether the temporary shift to telehealth services has changed the attitudes toward the usage of technology-enabled health services in rural communities. METHODS: We examined the Medicaid reimbursement data for the state of Alabama from March 2019 through June 2021. Selecting the telehealth service codes, we explored the adoption rates in 3 phases of the COVID-19 shutdown: prepandemic, pandemic before the rollout of mass vaccination, and pandemic after the rollout of mass vaccination. RESULTS: The trend in telemedicine claims had an opposite pattern to that in nontelemedicine claims across the 3 periods. The distribution of various characteristics of patients who used telemedicine (age group, gender, race, level of rurality, and service provider type) was different across the 3 periods. Claims related to behavior and mental health had the highest rates of telemedicine usage after the onset of the pandemic. The rate of telemedicine usage remained at a high level after the rollout of mass vaccination. CONCLUSIONS: The current trends indicate that adoption of telehealth services is likely to increase postpandemic and that the consumers (patients), service providers, health care establishments, insurance companies, and state and local policies have changed their attitudes toward telehealth. An increase in the use of telehealth could help local and federal governments address the shortage of health care facilities and service providers in underserved communities, and patients can get the much-needed care in a timely and effective manner.
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spelling pubmed-92903322022-07-19 Pandemic-Triggered Adoption of Telehealth in Underserved Communities: Descriptive Study of Pre- and Postshutdown Trends Xu, Pei Hudnall, Matthew Zhao, Sidi Raja, Uzma Parton, Jason Lewis, Dwight J Med Internet Res Original Paper BACKGROUND: The adoption of telehealth services has been a challenge in rural communities. The reasons for the slow adoption of such technology-driven services have been attributed to social norms, health care policies, and a lack of infrastructure to support the delivery of services. However, the COVID-19 pandemic–related shutdown of in-person health care services resulted in the usage of telehealth services as a necessity rather than a choice. The pandemic also fast-tracked some needed legislation to allow medical cost reimbursement for remote examination and health care services. As services return to normalcy, it is important to examine whether the usage of telehealth services during the period of a shutdown has changed any of the trends in the acceptance of telehealth as a reliable alternative to traditional in-person health care services. OBJECTIVE: Our aim was to explore whether the temporary shift to telehealth services has changed the attitudes toward the usage of technology-enabled health services in rural communities. METHODS: We examined the Medicaid reimbursement data for the state of Alabama from March 2019 through June 2021. Selecting the telehealth service codes, we explored the adoption rates in 3 phases of the COVID-19 shutdown: prepandemic, pandemic before the rollout of mass vaccination, and pandemic after the rollout of mass vaccination. RESULTS: The trend in telemedicine claims had an opposite pattern to that in nontelemedicine claims across the 3 periods. The distribution of various characteristics of patients who used telemedicine (age group, gender, race, level of rurality, and service provider type) was different across the 3 periods. Claims related to behavior and mental health had the highest rates of telemedicine usage after the onset of the pandemic. The rate of telemedicine usage remained at a high level after the rollout of mass vaccination. CONCLUSIONS: The current trends indicate that adoption of telehealth services is likely to increase postpandemic and that the consumers (patients), service providers, health care establishments, insurance companies, and state and local policies have changed their attitudes toward telehealth. An increase in the use of telehealth could help local and federal governments address the shortage of health care facilities and service providers in underserved communities, and patients can get the much-needed care in a timely and effective manner. JMIR Publications 2022-07-15 /pmc/articles/PMC9290332/ /pubmed/35786564 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/38602 Text en ©Pei Xu, Matthew Hudnall, Sidi Zhao, Uzma Raja, Jason Parton, Dwight Lewis. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (https://www.jmir.org), 15.07.2022. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://www.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Xu, Pei
Hudnall, Matthew
Zhao, Sidi
Raja, Uzma
Parton, Jason
Lewis, Dwight
Pandemic-Triggered Adoption of Telehealth in Underserved Communities: Descriptive Study of Pre- and Postshutdown Trends
title Pandemic-Triggered Adoption of Telehealth in Underserved Communities: Descriptive Study of Pre- and Postshutdown Trends
title_full Pandemic-Triggered Adoption of Telehealth in Underserved Communities: Descriptive Study of Pre- and Postshutdown Trends
title_fullStr Pandemic-Triggered Adoption of Telehealth in Underserved Communities: Descriptive Study of Pre- and Postshutdown Trends
title_full_unstemmed Pandemic-Triggered Adoption of Telehealth in Underserved Communities: Descriptive Study of Pre- and Postshutdown Trends
title_short Pandemic-Triggered Adoption of Telehealth in Underserved Communities: Descriptive Study of Pre- and Postshutdown Trends
title_sort pandemic-triggered adoption of telehealth in underserved communities: descriptive study of pre- and postshutdown trends
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9290332/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35786564
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/38602
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