Medicare telehealth use: High satisfaction, low future interest

New federal data shows that while a third of Medicare beneficiaries used telehealth in 2024, a little less than half were interested in having the option to use telehealth in the future.

The data is included in the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission's (MedPAC) Health Care Spending and the Medicare Program data book, which was released on July 17.

The telehealth data is based on MedPAC's annual access-to-care survey, which Gallup conducted from July 25 to Sept. 9, 2024. The survey includes responses from 4,926 Medicare beneficiaries and 5,200 privately insured individuals. Understanding telehealth use within the Medicare population is critical as lawmakers consider the future of Medicare telehealth flexibilities, which are currently slated to expire at the end of September. 

Overall, 33% of Medicare beneficiaries said they had participated in a telehealth visit in the year prior, slightly less than 36% of privately insured people aged 50 to 64 who said the same. However, the type of telehealth visits each group participated in varied. Medicare patients (24%) were more likely than privately insured people (20%) to have had an audio-only telehealth visit. In contrast, 26% of privately insured people said they had a synchronous telehealth visit compared to 18% of Medicare beneficiaries.

Telehealth visits remained immensely popular among Medicare and privately insured individuals alike. Most Medicare patients said they were satisfied with their video visits (92%) and audio-only visits (93%). Similarly, 90% of privately insured people said they were satisfied with their video visits and 93% said the same about their audio-only visits.

Still, only 44% of all Medicare beneficiaries were interested in having access to at least one type of telehealth in the future. Meanwhile, 61% of privately insured people were interested in having the option of telehealth, either video or audio-only.

Notably, more Medicare patients wanted access to video visits than audio-only telehealth in the future, indicating potential synchronous telehealth access barriers within this population.

The report further shows that telehealth visits were more common among Medicare beneficiaries who lived in urban areas, had household incomes of at least $50,000 and were younger than 75. These subgroups were also more interested in having access to telehealth in the future.

Additionally, there were no statistically significant racial differences among Medicare beneficiaries who used telehealth.

This last point marks a shift from pandemic-era telehealth utilization data, which shows racial gaps among Medicare telehealth users.

A 2021 federal report revealed that telehealth usage by Medicare beneficiaries increased 63-fold from 2019 to 2020. The report, which included data for 33.08 million Medicare beneficiaries in 2019 and 32.25 million in 2020, also showed that a lower proportion of Black beneficiaries had a visit via telehealth (4.7%) compared to white beneficiaries (5.3%). Meanwhile, both Hispanic (6.2%) and Asian (6.4%) patients had higher telehealth usage compared to white patients.

However, the urban-rural divide persists, with the 2021 report also showing higher telehealth utilization among urban beneficiaries versus their rural counterparts.

Anuja Vaidya has covered the healthcare industry since 2012. She currently covers the virtual healthcare landscape, including telehealth, remote patient monitoring and digital therapeutics.