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

Abstract

Background: 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. Methods: 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. Findings: 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 (χ2=268.58,p