3 Barriers to Implementing Home-Based Healthcare

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically shifted the ways in which patients access medical care. An Epic Health Research Network study found that between mid-March and mid-April, 2020, telemedicine appointments grew at a rate 300 times greater than during the same stretch of time in spring 2019.

Clearly, the barriers to telemedicine and other forms of home-based healthcare did not immediately fall in the wake of the pandemic and concomitant shelter-in-place orders. And while the federal government, state-level governments and insurers loosened some policies to help expand the use of telemedicine during the crisis, more will be required to make telemedicine a robust and reliable form of home-based healthcare in the years to come.