During 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, visits to the emergency department (ED) plunged by as much as 42% in the US, resulting in excess morbidity and mortality due to patients deferring or avoiding emergency care. With the declaration of a public health emergency, payors such as Medicare authorized emergency physicians (EPs) to bill for evaluation and management services delivered through telehealth—potentially allowing EPs to project emergency care beyond the four walls of the physical ED.
In collaboration with ACEP and the Emergency Medicine Practice Resource Network (EMPRN), West Health Institute designed a survey to understand the current usage of telehealth in EDs, the barriers to using telehealth in emergency care, and how to motivate EPs to further the adoption of telehealth. The results of the survey can be found in the presentation below.