FAIR Health Presents on Telehealth at National, Regional and State Levels

April 15, 2021

FAIR Health’s telehealth resources have captured the interest of key stakeholders across the country, including representatives from the Mid-Atlantic Telehealth Resource Center, the National Consortium of Telehealth Resource Centers and the Virginia Telehealth Network. These organizations invited us to share our telehealth findings with their membership and other audiences at their conferences. The Mid-Atlantic Telehealth Resource Center and the National Consortium of Telehealth Resource Centers are funded by the Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA), while the Virginia Telehealth Network is a nonprofit membership organization. Throughout the spring, FAIR Health President Robin Gelburd has been virtually presenting to these conferences alongside other leaders dedicated to bringing transparency to the telehealth sector.

Mid-Atlantic Telehealth Resource Center Summit
On March 31, at the Mid-Atlantic Telehealth Resource Center Summit, Ms. Gelburd moderated a panel entitled “How the Pandemic Has Altered the Telehealth Landscape for Mental Health Services.” The panelists were Todd Molfenter, PhD, Deputy Director, NIATx, CHESS, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Director, Great Lakes Addiction, Mental Health and Prevention Technology Transfer Centers, and Ann A. Murphy, PhD, CPRP, Co-Director, Mental Health Technology Transfer Center at Rutgers University. Ms. Gelburd presented on telehealth and mental health data in the mid-Atlantic region, while the two panelists presented survey data on telehealth adoption for mental health services.

Ms. Gelburd discussed differences in telehealth utilization during the COVID-19 pandemic throughout the mid-Atlantic region. She noted, for example, that telehealth claim lines were a greater percentage of all medical claim lines in Delaware; Maryland; Washington, DC; New Jersey; and Pennsylvania as compared to Kentucky, West Virginia, North Carolina and Virginia. Continuing to focus on the mid-Atlantic region, she examined telehealth by age band and gender, compared charges for telehealth to those for in-person settings, and presented top telehealth procedure codes and diagnoses. She closed by analyzing mental health telehealth trends in the mid-Atlantic region, showing, for example, that generalized anxiety disorder was the top mental health telehealth diagnosis in the region.

National Consortium of Telehealth Resource Centers
On April 14, Ms. Gelburd presented to invited participants at a meeting, organized by the National Consortium of Telehealth Resource Centers, of Telehealth Resource Center staff and HRSA representatives. Her presentation, “Telehealth Evolution in the United States,” focused on developments in telehealth throughout 2020 and included national and regional data. By selected months (January, April, August, December), she presented information on top telehealth procedure codes and diagnoses, as well as utilization. She also analyzed telehealth usage by age and gender, delved into top mental health telehealth diagnoses and top asynchronous diagnoses, and discussed charges for telehealth versus in-office services.

Virginia Telehealth Network Summit
On April 23, at the Virginia Telehealth Network Summit, Ms. Gelburd will deliver a presentation entitled “Telehealth Services Evolving through the Pandemic,” which will focus on Virginia-specific data. Ms. Gelburd will compare Virginia telehealth in 2019 and 2020 in selected months (January, April, July, October, December), including variables such as volume of claim lines, urban versus rural usage, diagnoses, mental health conditions and procedure codes. She also will make a series of detailed comparisons between charges for telehealth and all places of service, by procedure code and Virginia geozip (a geographic area typically corresponding to the first three digits of a zip code).

After her presentation, Ms. Gelburd will participate in a speaker discussion with Jessica Rosenworcel, the Acting Chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission.