Resources & Reports

While many pieces of federal legislation regarding telehealth have been introduced over the last two years, as shown in the recently introduced S. 3593: Telehealth Extension and Evaluation Act, there are some consistent components that continue to emerge as key elements across federal telehealth bills and policy conversations. Initially, many bills focused on making telehealth expansions permanent, but there has been a shift to now just proposing to extend such expansions, namely those that lessen Medicare geographic barriers and federal prescribing limitations, in addition to allowing more time to study expansion related effects.

As policymakers consider permanent telehealth policy changes, tracking the latest data has become increasingly important, in addition to breaking down data highlights and differences. Two new Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Data Highlight reports were recently released that look at telehealth trends amongst Medicare patients during the pandemic. In addition, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report submitted to Congress in early February assessed telehealth expansion impacts related to mental healthcare access for military service members.

The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) Office of Health Policy recently released a new Issue Brief titled National Survey Trends in Telehealth Use in 2021: Disparities in Utilization and Audio vs. Video Services. The analysis found a number of trends that can be helpful in understanding remaining telehealth barriers and their interaction with health care disparities. Utilizing Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey (HPS) information from 2021, the study focused on differences in use between live video and audio-only telehealth modalities.