Minding the Access Gap: Addressing Both the Digital and Transportation Divides to Improve Outcomes

Prompted by concerns that some in-person care was too dangerous during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the US health care sector accelerated telehealth’s expansion. While telehealth has improved access to many outpatient services, marginalized patients rural, poor, older, and minority patients may not have benefitted equally from telehealth’s expansion. This stems, in part, from the “digital divide” differential access to personal technology or broadband connectivity that results from historic disparities in economic means or educational attainment.

If the digital divide is not addressed, ongoing and broader implementation of telehealth could exacerbate inequities in health and health care outcomes. Understandably, policy makers and health systems have been focused on equity initiatives to narrow the digital divide: expanding broadband access, distributing digital devices, and deploying digital health navigators or community health workers.