CareJourney JumpStart - Telehealth Expansion in Medicare

For countless individuals across the United States and the world, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a rapid shift to digital life. In the healthcare industry, the sudden need to reduce patient travel and exposure while preserving provider capacity resulted in an unprecedented increase in the adoption of telemedicine. The significant growth in telehealth claims data in 2020 enables us to gain an understanding of which geographies and patient populations have been best served by telehealth, and where additional room for growth exists.

Learn more about the history and expansion of telehealth in Medicare on the CareJourney blog.

Dashboard

This dashboard allows users to view telehealth utilization, visits, spend by key demographics and geography among Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries in January through September of 2020.

Use the Metric filter at the top of the dashboard to select the metric that you’d like to see modeled throughout the dashboard. Options include three normalized metrics (percentages or rates per 1000 beneficiaries) and three overall (non-normalized) metrics. Use the State filter to view data for specific state(s) of interest. The entire dashboard will update to reflect your geographic selection.

In the bottom section of the dashboard, use the Cohort radio buttons to select the demographic breakdown to view. Options include ACO assignment status, age group, frailty segment, and Medicare enrollment cohort. The charts at the bottom of the dashboard will update to reflect this selection.

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Data Source & Methodology

This dashboard is based on the 100% Medicare fee-for-service claims database. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) provided CareJourney with the most up-to-date claims data available. As such, claims are available through September of 2020, with claims runout through May 2020.

Telehealth claims were identified using the following criteria:

Part B & Outpatient Claims
Valid codes that can be billed to telehealth (including those specifically added during the 2020 public health crisis)
Billing to either:

Telehealth place of service code (02)
Telehealth HCPCS modifier codes (95, GT, GQ, G0)

Claim lines with > $0 allowed spend

The universe of patients included in this analysis are those with at least one month of eligible Medicare fee-for-service enrollment in 2020. Patients are segmented by demographics including:

State and county of residence, sourced from the 2020 Master Beneficiary Summary File (MBSF)
ACO assignment status, sourced from the Q4 2019 CMS ACO assignment roster
Age group, sourced from the 2020 Master Beneficiary Summary File (MBSF)
Patient frailty segment, based on a combination of demographic and health factors
Medicare Enrollment Cohort, based on January 2020 enrollment and sourced from the 2019 Master Beneficiary Summary File (MBSF)
Predicted 30-Day COVID Mortality Risk cohort, based on patient age, gender, Charlson Comorbidity Index, and documented myocardial infarction (MI) or peripheral vascular disease (PVD)

Telehealth Expansion in Medicare:

Policy Changes, Recent Trends in Adoption, and Future Impact

Overview

Dashboard

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Data Source & Methodology

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