The Covid-19 pandemic has furthered large-scale changes in the behaviour of the American population. Unsurprisingly, one of the most visible resultant changes has been in the sudden growth in telehealth services. The use of telecommunications and Internet–based systems to connect patients to physicians, or medical professionals to medical professionals, experienced a meteoric surge in growth in 2020.
One study, made by the major healthcare information technology company Epic Systems, found that telemedicine visits increased 300-fold year-to-year in the first month following the announcement relative to 2019. A similar study made by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) found a 350-fold increase from February 2020 to May 2020 for Medicare primary care telehealth visits.
Changes in federal regulation made this extremely rapid growth in telehealth and telemedicine possible. Medicare restrictions that only compensated the use of telemedicine in selected rural locations were lifted, allowing patients to use telecommunications technology at any location (including the home) for medical services that previously had been required to take place in person, with private…
