FELLOW:Z ZHANG The Impact of Telehealth on Healthcare Utilization, Health Behavior and Quality of Care for Middle-aged and Older Adults with Cardiometabolic Risk
Summary
Telehealth (or telemedicine) has become essential to the modern healthcare system. The COVID-19 pandemic created an urgent context for the expansion of telehealth. To respond to the public health emergency, federal and states governments implemented temporary modifications and policies to support the utilization of telehealth. The objectives of this study are to evaluate the impact of the state-level telehealth payment parity mandate on health service utilization in the U.S. health system, and leverage the causal evaluation of how telehealth impacts health behavior (medication adherence) and disease-specific quality of care for middle-aged and older adults with cardiometabolic risk (CMR).