{"id":236908,"date":"2026-05-11T15:12:35","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T20:12:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/telemedicine-use-grew-without-boosting-medical-visits-or-spending-analysis-shows"},"modified":"2026-05-11T15:12:35","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T20:12:35","slug":"telemedicine-use-grew-without-boosting-medical-visits-or-spending-analysis-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/telemedicine-use-grew-without-boosting-medical-visits-or-spending-analysis-shows","title":{"rendered":"Telemedicine use grew without boosting medical visits or spending, analysis shows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/telemedicine-use-grew-without-boosting-medical-visits-or-spending-analysis-shows.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>New UCLA-led research finds that the use of telemedicine has not significantly increased visits and medical spending across all payer types. The findings, <a href=\"https:\/\/jamanetwork.com\/journals\/jamanetworkopen\/fullarticle\/10.1001\/jamanetworkopen.2026.11835?guestAccessKey=050a8d91-f218-4a4c-b89a-647184d473cf\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>JAMA Network Open<\/i>, could ease concerns among lawmakers that the telemedicine expansion that occurred during the COVID pandemic would result in large utilization and spending increases.<\/p>\n<p>With the declaration of the COVID pandemic in 2020, the Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid Services (CMS) changed key policies regarding telemedicine flexibility, such as introducing <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/news\/2026-01-telehealth-coverage-brink-hasnt-driven.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">payment parity<\/a> with in-person visits, waiving geographic restrictions, and eliminating out-of-pocket cost sharing.<\/p>\n<p>Once the pandemic was declared over, however, lawmakers extended these changes to analyze how telemedicine impacted health care use and spending. Those CMS flexibilities are due to expire in 2027, and lawmakers continue to debate whether to permanently extend or modify them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New UCLA-led research finds that the use of telemedicine has not significantly increased visits and medical spending across all payer types. The findings, published in JAMA Network Open, could ease concerns among lawmakers that the telemedicine expansion that occurred during the COVID pandemic would result in large utilization and spending increases. With the declaration of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1495],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236908\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}