HealthDay News — More than 45% of visits for mental health conditions are conducted by telehealth compared with 3.3% of visits for non-mental health conditions, according to a research letter published online February 17 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Noting that the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services does not support permanent telehealth coverage for non-mental health medical conditions, Terrence Liu, MD, from the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City, and colleagues examined the potential impact on US Medicare beneficiaries. Pooled data were included from US adults with one or more outpatient visits in the 2021 to 2023 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, and were used to generate national estimates of Medicare beneficiaries and telehealth visits.

Of the 14,950 respondents with Medicare coverage during 2021 to 2023, 83.6% had only in-person visits, while 16.4% had one or more telehealth visits. More telehealth users reported any physical or cognitive limitation, fair or poor health, and higher mean total number of outpatient visits. The researchers found that 45.1% of the visits for mental health conditions were via telehealth. For non-mental health conditions, 3.3% of visits were by telehealth. Of the conditions addressed at telehealth visits, the highest numbers of estimated annual telehealth visits were for anxiety-related disorders and depressive disorders (9,449,133 and 8,766,332, respectively). The most frequent estimated annual visits among non-mental health conditions addressed by telehealth were for uncomplicated diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and COVID-19 (2,192,213; 1,527,758; and 1,101,947, respectively).

“Curtailing coverage could reverse recent gains in access and continuity of care, leaving older patients with potentially significant barriers to care if it must be delivered in person,” the authors write.

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