Study of 40.7M adults finds telehealth comparable for chronic conditions

But patients with acute conditions who had initial telehealth encounters appeared to require additional follow-up visits.

A study of 40.7 million commercially insured adults in the United States who sought care via telehealth found contrasting patterns of follow-up care between those with chronic conditions and those with acute clinical conditions.   

The research, which was published this week in JAMA Network Open, assessed outcomes of care two weeks after patients' initial ambulatory encounters.  

"Telehealth accounted for a large share of ambulatory encounters at the peak of the pandemic and remained prevalent after infection rates subsided," said researchers in the study, which was funded in part by the American Telemedicine Association.  

"Telehealth encounters for chronic conditions had similar rates of follow-up to in-person encounters for these conditions, whereas telehealth encounters for acute conditions seemed to be more likely than in-person encounters to require follow-up," they observed.