Medicare FFS Mental Health Telehealth Expansion Helped Maintain Existing Service Use Levels

The expansion of Medicare mental health services delivered by telehealth between 2019 and 2023 helped maintain existing service use levels for fee-for-service (FFS) beneficiaries, according to a recently released retrospective analysis.

Researchers examined monthly telehealth and in-person outpatient mental health service use and spending rates among FFS beneficiaries. They sought to determine how the telehealth flexibilities permitted during the COVID-19 pandemic affected FFS use of mental health services. The data were drawn from FFS carrier claims and restricted to outpatient and telehealth place-of-service codes.

A claims analysis of 9.5 million FFS beneficiaries who . . .