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Telemedicine is an alternative to face-to-face communication between patients and healthcare providers, using telephone or video. Telemedicine helps to ensure access to health care for people in rural and remote areas, and it also makes care more efficient and convenient for patients.
Telemedicine includes real-time contact between patients and their doctors, in-home electronic monitoring of patients with chronic conditions, and electronic access to specialists who can help a local hospital diagnose a patient or come up with treatment options. (For example, a small rural hospital can use telemedicine to connect with a larger, better equipped/staffed hospital in an urban area when analyzing a patient’s symptoms.)
The Affordable Care Act includes provisions to increase the use of telemedicine, but coverage and utilization still varies considerably from one state to another.
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Elected bodies and state agencies are taking action to expand access to health coverage and treatment during the current pandemic.
Medicare already covers a number of telehealth services, and now provides significantly expanded telehealth benefits for the duration of the coronavirus crisis.
During the pandemic, many of the Medicare enrollees who utilized telehealth did so just by picking up the phone.
Sixty-six percent of medicareresources.org readers who responded to our most recent survey used telehealth at least once during 2020. Of those, more than 26% used telehealth often.