Telehealth Has Not Driven Up Total Health Care Visits

TUESDAY, Jan. 27, 2026 (HealthDay News) — Even for specialties with high telehealth adoption, the total number of overall health care visits was stable or declined through mid-2024, according to a study published in the December issue of Health Affairs Scholar.

James D. Lee, from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and colleagues assessed whether increased telehealth adoption was associated with changes in overall outpatient office visits among Medicare beneficiaries. The analysis included Medicare fee-for-service claims from Carrier and Outpatient files (January 2019 to June 2024) for 60.5 million beneficiaries aged 65 years and older with Part A and Part B coverage (538.8 million outpatient visits).

The researchers found that in the postpandemic period, telehealth comprised 5.3, 9.1, and 43.8 percent of total outpatient office visits for specialties with low, medium, and high telehealth adoption, respectively. Despite variation in telehealth adoption postpandemic, all three groups showed declines in the predicted number of total outpatient office visits (decreases of 14 percent, 17 percent, and 18 percent for the low, medium, and high telehealth groups, respectively). Both medium (incidence rate ratio [IRR], 0.96) and high (IRR, 0.91) telehealth groups saw significantly larger declines postpandemic compared with the low telehealth group.

“One of the things that is paralyzing the policy debate is uncertainty and concern about whether covering telehealth in parity with in-person care would be associated with runaway utilization,” Lee said in a statement. “But we don’t see that here.”

Abstract/Full Text