One way to tell if something is trending is to take a look at how much people are talking about it. And, based on how many articles have been written about telehealth recently, it is definitely trending. Here are the highlights of just a few:

Health system uses telehealth to steer patients away from ER, urgent care

A recent article in Healthcare IT News highlights the original purpose of telehealth: to provide urgently needed care that otherwise might result in a more expensive in-person visit. The article reports on one North Carolina hospital system that steered people toward telehealth first and found that “61% of patients who used virtual urgent care would have gone to an urgent care facility” if they hadn’t talked to a doctor over the phone. Another “14% would have gone to an emergency room.”

Telehealth Continues Rapid Growth Tied to COVID-19

The big benefit of telehealth, or at least the one most insurance agents have been pitching up to this point, is that it allows patients to skip the lines and get care right away through an audio or video call with a health care provider. It’s more convenient and less expensive than an in-person visit, and a number of medical conditions can be properly diagnosed and treated virtually.

While a growing number of people were discovering and using telehealth prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, usage has exploded over the past two years. US News wrote about the surge in telehealth utilization early on in the pandemic: “Telehealth permits health care services to be delivered without in-person contact, reducing the risk of disease transmission, and frees up health care resources for COVID-19 patients. For those reasons, federal and state regulations related to telehealth have been relaxed, and private payors have expanded access to telehealth.”

We’ve even witnessed the growth of telehealth among the Medicare population. In fact, HHS reports a “63-fold increase in Medicare telehealth utilization during the pandemic.” While the rules were changed temporarily to provide greater access to telehealth services for seniors, many are calling for these changes to be made permanent.

How Telehealth Will Continue its Evolution Beyond Pandemic Response

A December 27 article by mHealth Intelligence describes the “meteoric rise” of telehealth nearly two years ago as “a  tool to address the social distancing constraints brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.” While some providers report that 2021 usage of telehealth services was a little lower than 2020, it is still much higher than pre-pandemic levels. Other providers say telehealth is still growing but at a slower rate than before the pandemic.

Going forward, telehealth is likely to evolve and become the preferred method of treatment for certain types of visits according to the article. In fact, many health care leaders envision a “virtual-first reimbursement landscape” in the near future.

Video Telehealth as Effective as Usual Care for Chronic Diseases

While telehealth was initially used for urgent care, a December study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine looked at the pros and cons of using telehealth for the treatment of chronic conditions. The findings, as reported by mHealth Intelligence, “generally show that video telehealth results in outcomes that are just as good as, and in some cases, better than usual care” in treating a multitude of chronic diseases, including “diabetes, respiratory conditions like asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pain-related disorders, and heart failure.”

Overall, in-person and virtual care “showed similar results for clinical effectiveness, healthcare use, patient satisfaction, and quality of life as usual care for the conditions studied.” 

The federal government seems to agree. The CDC’s “Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF) recommends several telehealth interventions for reducing chronic disease risk factors in patients and managing chronic disease conditions.” Some of these conditions include high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, asthma, obesity, HIV infection, and end-stage renal disease.

With mounting evidence about the benefits of telehealth for the treatment of chronic conditions, we can expect to see the use of virtual care for all sorts of medical needs continue to grow; it’s not just for urgent care anymore.

Other recent articles discuss the use of virtual care for mental and behavioral health services as well as the rise of teledentistry.

The new frontier in employee benefits: Virtual specialty care

A January 10 article posted on BenefitsPro.com discusses what may be next for telehealth: specialty care delivered virtually. The author, Julian Flannery, says that “virtual care is here to stay, but it is also evolving rapidly.” She calls this evolution “virtual care 2.0” and points to virtual specialty care as the next big thing. 

“The health care system,” she explains, “doesn’t make it easy to get answers. It is often perplexing for both employees and employers to navigate the process and get access to good, timely care.” Virtual specialty care can help solve that problem by delivering “a highly personalized experience that solves for the complexity and cost of specialty care.” Because a small percentage of people drive much of the claims cost for insurers and large, self-insured employers, making sure these folks have access to the high-quality care they need in a timely fashion can result in big savings.

While virtual specialty care is something currently being offered by forward thinking employers looking for solutions that their employees will use and appreciate, if the experiment is successful, we could soon see individual carriers incorporating this benefit into the health plans they offer. It didn’t take long for traditional telehealth benefits for urgently needed care to transition from a voluntary employer offering to a standard benefit in most group and individual health plans, and virtual specialty care, if successful in improving access and reducing costs, could follow the same path.

Why brokers should be talking about telehealth

Clients don’t need you to tell them what they already know; they need you to tell them what they don’t know. And they usually don’t know about the latest developments in health insurance or health care. Since telehealth is 1) popular, 2) growing, and 3) rapidly changing, it’s probably something you should be discussing with your clients. In fact, as health plans continue to cover more telehealth services and the medical profession continues to push people to telehealth for more and more treatments, this is something your clients need to know about so they can get the most out of their health coverage. Remember, it’s always better for your clients to hear it from you than from somebody else. Since telehealth is here to stay, it should be incorporated into your client communications.

Keep in mind that every National General Short Term Medical plan includes an unlimited telemedicine benefit for $0 per visit.