Industry News

On August 5, 2021, the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) released its report, Who, What, When, Where, and Why: Trends in Telemedicine Usage From 2016–2020. The EBRI report indicates that telemedicine usage remains higher than prior to the COVID-19 pandemic with a disproportionate number of patients likely being women, older adults and named policyholders.

According to the report, “Telemedicine visits spiked during March 2020, when states issued stay-at-home orders and health care providers suspended nearly all in-person outpatient services. While patients’ use of telemedicine for visits decreased after April 2020 from their meteoric highs, there is evidence that telemedicine visits have remained persistently higher than their prepandemic trends. Telemedicine users tended to be older and disproportionately female relative to patients who do not use telemedicine.”  

EBRI’s analysis was based on a proprietary database containing about 150,000 covered lives and 16 million encounters to examine telemedicine trends in usage, conditions patients seek to address, and whether there were related factors for a particular visit being conducted via telemedicine.

The summary report is available here.