Study: Telehealth Use Drives Up Costs
March 8, 2017 |
by Meg Bryant
Direct-to-consumer telehealth services make care more convenient by giving patients with minor illnesses 24-7 access to a physician, but they don’t necessarily reduce costs by substituting for office and emergency room (ER) visits, a new study published in Health Affairs suggests.
Researchers at RAND Corporation looked at three years of claims data and found that just 12% of telehealth visits for acute respiratory illness replaced visits to other providers, while 88% represented new utilization.
