NDLI: Telehealth utilization in U.S. Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 years and older during the COVID-19 pandemic

Content Provider	Springer Nature : BioMed Central
Author	Lu, Min Liao, Xinyi
Abstract	The COVID-19 pandemic has become a serious public health concern for older adults and amplified the value of deploying telehealth solutions. The purpose of this study was to investigate telehealth offered by providers among U.S. Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 years and older during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-sectional study analyzed Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 years and older using data from the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey, Winter 2021 COVID-19 Supplement ( $n=9,185$ ). We identified variables that were associated with telehealth offered by primary care physicians and beneficiaries’ access to the Internet through a multivariate classification analysis utilizing Random Forest machine learning techniques. For study participants interviewed by telephone, 81.06% of primary care providers provided telehealth services, and 84.62% of the Medicare beneficiaries had access to the Internet. The survey response rates for each outcome were 74.86% and 99.55% respectively. The two outcomes were positively correlated ( $\chi ^2=268.58,\,p<.001$ ). The Our machine learning model predicted the outcomes accurately utilizing 44 variables. Residing area and race/ethnicity were most informative for predicting telehealth coverage, and Medicare-Medicaid dual eligibility and income were most informative for predicting Internet access. Other strong correlates included age, ability to access basic needs and certain mental and physical health conditions. Interactions were found among statuses of residing area, age, Medicare Advantage and heart conditions that intensified the disparity of outcomes. We found that telehealth offered by providers likely increased during the COVID-19 pandemic for older beneficiaries, providing important access to care for certain subgroups. Policymakers must continue to identify effective means of delivering telehealth services, modernize the framework of regulatory, accreditation and reimbursement, and address disparities in access to telehealth with a particular focus on underserved communities.
Related Links	https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/counter/pdf/10.1186/s12889-023-15263-0.pdf
Ending Page	14
Page Count	14
Starting Page	1
File Format	HTM / HTML
ISSN	14712458
DOI	10.1186/s12889-023-15263-0
Journal	BMC Public Health
Issue Number	1
Volume Number	23
Language	English
Publisher	BioMed Central
Publisher Date	2023-02-20
Access Restriction	Open
Subject Keyword	Public Health Medicine Epidemiology Biostatistics Vaccine Environmental Health COVID-19 Older adults Medicare Primary care Telehealth Telemedicine Medicine/Public Health
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
Journal Impact Factor	3.5/2023
5-Year Journal Impact Factor	3.9/2023

Sl.	Authority	Responsibilities	Communication Details
1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
5	Website/Portal (Helpdesk)	Queries regarding NDLI and its services	support@ndl.gov.in
6	Contents and Copyright Issues	Queries related to content curation and copyright issues	content@ndl.gov.in
7	National Digital Library of India Club (NDLI Club)	Queries related to NDLI Club formation, support, user awareness program, seminar/symposium, collaboration, social media, promotion, and outreach	clubsupport@ndl.gov.in
8	Digital Preservation Centre (DPC)	Assistance with digitizing and archiving copyright-free printed books	dpc@ndl.gov.in
9	IDR Setup or Support	Queries related to establishment and support of Institutional Digital Repository (IDR) and IDR workshops	idr@ndl.gov.in

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