Increased Telemedicine Utilization by Medicare Participants

HealthDay News –  Despite an increasing number of telemedicine visits among Medicare beneficiaries, only 0.7% of those visits were attributed to use by rural Medicare participants in 2013, according to a research letter published in the May 10 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Ateev Mehrotra, MD, from Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues describe trends in telemedicine utilization within Medicare from 2004 to 2013 for rural beneficiaries. Telemedicine encounters were defined as all encounters with a GT or GQ modifier or a telemedicine-specific code.

The researchers observed an increase in telemedicine visits among rural beneficiaries, from 7015 in 2004 to 107 955 in 2013 (28% annual visit growth rate). The mean number of visits was 2.6 for the 0.7% of rural beneficiaries who received a telemedicine visit in 2013. 

The visits mainly occurred in outpatient clinics; 12.5% took place in a hospital or skilled nursing facility. Most visits (78.9%) were for mental health conditions. Compared with those who did not receive a telemedicine visit, rural beneficiaries who received a telemedicine visit in 2013 were likely to be younger than 65 years, have entered Medicare due to disability, have more comorbidity, and live in a poorer community.

“Although the number of Medicare telemedicine visits increased more than 25% a year for the past decade, in 2013, less than 1% of rural Medicare beneficiaries received a telemedicine visit,” the authors write.

Reference

Mehrotra A, Jena AB, Busch AB, Souza J, Uscher-pines L, Landon BE. Utilization of Telemedicine Among Rural Medicare Beneficiaries. JAMA. 2016;315(18):2015-2016.