A new study suggests that greater adoption of telehealth may be accompanied by reduced utilization of low-value medical testing – diagnostic tests, screenings, or procedures that seem to provide little to no clinical benefit to the patient and are increasingly considered unnecessary tests that waste resources despite evidence-based recommendations that they be prescribed less often.
The study found that patients served by medical practices that embraced telehealth had slightly more overall visits a year but underwent fewer of seven of the 20 major low-value medical tests, many of which are usually performed at the point of care.
The analysis also found providers prescribed fewer tests overall during virtual visits but that the reductions in tests were greater for low-value tests than high-value tests.
Learn more about the potential impact of telehealth on the use of low-value and high-value testing and on health care spending from the Commonwealth Fund blog report “When Barriers May Be Beneficial — What We’ve Learned About Telemedicine and Low-Value Care.”