The Minneapolis Star Tribune looks at the  MN Department of Health has released a new report, Study of Telehealth Expansion and Payment Parity (I wrote about it last month.) …

“The picture of telehealth is getting clearer,” said Pam Mink, the MDH director of health services research. “It’s really evolved into a lot of aspects of primary care.”

The report said the state Legislature should continue investing in telehealth and encouraging its use after it became a lifeline during the COVID-19 pandemic. Telehealth use increased from 3% of primary care visits among privately insured Minnesotans in 2019 to more than 20% in 2021, the report showed. But even in 2022, when no pandemic restrictions were in place, patients chose it for 19% of those visits.

Online options such as Virtuwell remain available, pairing patients with doctors they likely haven’t seen before to make routine diagnoses and issue quick prescriptions. But the post-pandemic growth has largely been among primary care doctors in their visits with established patients, especially those needing regular checkups and medication adjustments for chronic conditions such as diabetes and depression.

They also look at mental health services…

Telehealth has grown especially popular for mental health appointments, but it can address many physical ailments, said Dr. Annie Ideker, an associate medical director who led the post-pandemic expansion of telehealth at HealthPartners clinics and hospitals. On one shift last week, Ideker conducted online sessions with patients who had Parkinson’s disease, osteoporosis, anxiety, high blood pressure and acid reflux. She said she has assessed orthopedic issues remotely by having patients demonstrate their range of motion on screen.

“It’s two-dimensional, and you’re only seeing their face, so you might miss some of the body language, like if they are tapping their foot under the desk or something,” she said. “It’s just a matter of being aware of that and using other techniques to try to elicit some of what you might be missing.”

There were some issues…

The state report offered mixed results in terms of the impact of telehealth on quality of care. Patients using telehealth were more likely to do checkups after hospitalizations, which are recommended to address any overlooked or delayed complications that could send patients right back into hospital care.

It’s all part of an ongoing discussion…

The state findings could inform an ongoing federal debate. Congress is under time pressure to decide before the end of the year whether to extend federal COVID-era policies that allowed all providers to offer telehealth to Medicare recipients and to pay for telehealth visits at the same rates as in-person visits.

Telehealth didn’t inflate health care spending in Minnesota, the study found, but there was no evidence of savings, either. The hope is that telehealth will reduce health care spending by increasing medical checks on chronically ill patients and preventing them from suffering costly and preventable complications. But the timeframe of the report was too narrow to document long-term effects.