Telehealth, the provision of health care services to patients from providers who are not at the same location, has experienced a rapid escalation in use during the COVID-19 pandemic, among both privately-insured patients and Medicare beneficiaries, KFF reports. Prior to the pandemic, telehealth utilization among traditional Medicare beneficiaries was extremely low, with only 0.3% of traditional Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in Part B using telehealth services in 2016. Between 2019 and 2020, the number of telehealth visits in traditional Medicare increased 63-fold. During the first year of the pandemic, more than 28 million Medicare beneficiaries overall used telehealth services, including almost half (49%) of Medicare Advantage enrollees and nearly 4 in 10 (38%) beneficiaries in traditional Medicare.
KFF prepared answers to questions about Medicare’s current coverage of telehealth, changes made at the outset of the public health emergency, additional changes adopted by Congress and the Administration, and some of the policy considerations that lie ahead. Read more.
