Telemedicine Has Surged During the COVID-19 Pandemic: How Are Americans Using It?
Key takeaways:
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, people have been increasingly using telemedicine to refill their regular prescriptions, treat acute conditions, and get elective (not urgent) health services.
Visits to refill prescriptions for chronic conditions like high cholesterol, hyperthyroidism, and anaphylaxis saw the biggest uptick in telemedicine use during the first three weeks of March, GoodRx data shows.
As people prioritize essential spending, the use of telemedicine for elective services like eyelash growth has seen lower demand.
As more people are forced to stay home and delay non-essential health services during the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for telemedicine has soared — and for some conditions more than others.
Telemedicine companies allow patients to speak virtually with a healthcare provider about many conditions and can help patients get prescriptions for medications like antibiotics or refills for critical treatments such as an EpiPen auto injector.
But as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread, what telemedicine services are people prioritizing?
Search and compare options
How has telemedicine use changed since the coronavirus pandemic began?
While telemedicine has seen increased use across all types of services, demand for essential services has grown faster than elective (non-urgent) services.
According to data from our telemedicine company, GoodRx Care, since March 1, telemedicine visits to obtain birth control and medication refills for chronic conditions like high cholesterol (hyperlipidemia), hyperthyroidism, and anaphylaxis saw about 10% more visits than expected. Similarly, visits to treat acute conditions like urinary tract infections (UTIs) and cold sores saw about 8% more visits than expected, while visits for elective services like erectile dysfunction and hair loss saw just 5% more visits than expected.
This trend suggests that people have been prioritizing more essential healthcare since COVID-19 began to spread in the United States.
Specifically, telemedicine visits to get regular medication refills as well as treatment for acute conditions like UTIs saw the biggest uptick in demand, while visits for some elective services like eyelash growth prescriptions saw a decline in growth overall.
People are using telemedicine for chronic conditions
Telemedicine to get prescription refills for chronic conditions saw the largest spike in visits. While growth in visits varied from week to week, overall visits for anaphylaxis refills increased by 18%, visits for cholesterol medication (hyperlipidemia) refills increased by 97%, and visits for hyperthyroidism refills increased by 17% over the first three weeks of March. Telemedicine visits for birth control also increased during the second and third weeks of March by 6% and 18%, respectively.
This observed increase in telemedicine use for necessary medications is consistent with the CDC’s recommendation that patients obtain extra medication to prepare for quarantine.
Below is a breakdown of visits for chronic conditions during the first three weeks of March.
Acute conditions are also a priority
We also looked at telemedicine visits to treat acute conditions like urinary tract infections (UTIs) and cold sores. Demand for cold sore treatment increased by 9% and 7% in the first and second weeks of March, respectively, but fell in the third week. Meanwhile, telemedicine visits to treat UTIs steadily increased from 1% to 23%.
As the number of people under self-quarantine due to COVID-19 has grown, it appears that many patients have been limiting contact by using telemedicine to treat acute conditions.
Non-essential medications and visits take a backseat
Finally, we looked at telemedicine visits for elective services like erectile dysfunction, hair loss, and eyelash growth.
Telemedicine visits for eyelash growth were actually 24% lower than expected in the first and second weeks of March and 43% lower than expected the third week of March, averaging 30% below trend.
Visits for erectile dysfunction still increased more than expected; however, growth slowed from 16% to 1% above trend.
Growth in visits for hair loss in the second and third weeks of March was also substantially lower.
Lower demand for these services could be a result of patients prioritizing other expenses or delaying these services during the COVID-19 outbreak.
While telemedicine has become increasingly important as part of the response to COVID-19, its use across different services has varied during the pandemic. GoodRx will continue to track and report on the latest trends in this emerging field of medicine.
Co-contributor: Sasha Guttentag, PhD
Methodology
To get a sense of what services have seen an increase in popularity due to COVID-19, we looked at the visit growth above trend for different telemedicine services since March. To calculate the percent change in visit growth above trend, we selected the most popular services from GoodRx Care. We then calculated a weekly growth rate for each service based upon the last year, February 1, 2019 to February 29, 2020. For the services without 12 months of data (the services added to GoodRx Care within the last 12 months), we calculated the growth rate beginning with the second month from service initiation.
Using the weekly growth rate, we predicted an expected number of visits for each condition for each week in March. We calculated the percent change from expected visits by evaluating the difference in actual visits for each week in March versus the predicted number of visits based upon the annual growth rate. Numbers are rounded to the nearest whole number.
Why trust our experts?
