Patients Use Telehealth When Clinicians Recommend, Require It
Research shows that clinicians drive patient telehealth use, but younger adults are more likely to use telehealth because their clinician said so than those over 60.
Source: Getty Images
By Anuja Vaidya
- Clinician recommendations or requirements are the most compelling reason for patients to seek and use telehealth, according to new research.
Published in The American Journal of Managed Care, the study aimed to evaluate patient motivations for using telehealth and patient characteristics associated with telehealth use in 2022. Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth usage spiked. While much research has been dedicated to assessing patient utilization and perspectives on telehealth, their motivations for using telehealth are less clear, the study authors wrote. However, creating appropriate payment policies and making informed decisions about telehealth requires understanding patients’ perceptions of telehealth value stemming from the motivations influencing use.
Thus, for the study, researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of California, San Francisco, conducted a secondary data analysis of the National Cancer Institute’s 2022 Health Information National Trends Survey. The survey was conducted between March and November 2022, polling 6,252 respondents with and without cancer. They excluded participants without healthcare visits in the previous 12 months, resulting in a final sample of 5,317 respondents.
Nearly 33 percent of respondents aged 18 to 29 years and 37 percent of those 60 years or older had used telehealth. One-third of respondents receiving telehealth were male (33.8 percent). Between 35 and 40 percent of respondents within each racial and ethnic group had received telehealth.
Telehealth users primarily received care for minor or acute illnesses, such as fever (30.4 percent), chronic disease management (21.5 percent), or mental health, behavioral health, or substance use management (16.9 percent).
The most common motivation for using telehealth was if the respondent’s physician recommended or required the service (73.6 percent). Other common reasons included convenience (65.7 percent), the opportunity to avoid exposure to infections (49.5 percent), wanting medical advice (29 percent), and the ability to include others (23.1 percent).
However, the study also found that respondents older than 60 were significantly less likely to use telehealth because their clinician required or recommended it than respondents 18 to 29.
This suggests “that barriers to telehealth use may surpass even clinicians’ requirement for telehealth visits or that patients — especially older adults — may require further explanation of potential value of receiving care via telehealth,” researchers wrote.
Further, survey respondents with depression were more likely to use telehealth because of convenience and to avoid exposure to infections than those without depression. Similarly, Hispanic respondents were more likely to use telehealth to avoid exposure to infections than White respondents.
“Identifying patients’ motivations may help decision makers better understand the perceived value of telehealth among patients and may help policy makers and administrators create opportunities for increased patient choice around visit modality to maximize health care access, value, and quality,” the researchers stated.
This research adds to our understanding of healthcare service utilization among United States healthcare consumers, which is rapidly evolving.
Last year, a survey revealed that US healthcare consumers prefer in-person care as they believe the quality, efficiency, and affordability of these services are better compared to virtual care. The survey polled 2,202 US adults from July 21 to July 23.
Only 6 percent of US adults surveyed said they preferred virtual care versus 53 percent who preferred in-person care. About 45 percent of survey respondents said that the affordability of in-person care was better, 74 percent of Americans said in-person care quality was better, and 7 percent said in-person care efficiency was better.
The preference for in-person care was evident across all age groups, even among Generation Z healthcare consumers. About 9 percent of Gen Z survey respondents said they preferred virtual care compared with 49 percent who preferred in-person care.
