Report: Behavioral Health Visits by Telehealth Soared 45 Times During Pandemic
With this week marking the 3-year anniversary of former President Donald Trump declaring a national emergency regarding COVID-19, a new report provides context on behavioral healthcare’s dramatic shift to telehealth-based offerings.
Use of telehealth for behavioral health services has increased 45 times since the beginning of the pandemic, according to a report published by Trilliant Health, an analytics and market research firm for the healthcare industry. The report also noted that while less than 1% of behavioral health visits were conducted over virtual platforms in 2019, that figure had swelled to 32.8% by the second quarter of 2022.
Trilliant noted that by Q2 2022, behavioral health visit volumes overall increased by 18% from where they were prior to the onset of the pandemic, with demand increasing in 9 of the nation’s 10 largest metropolitan areas. But while increases in visits to providers of services in other areas of healthcare were driven by small groups of high users, 66% of patients diagnosed with a mental health condition in 2021 saw a provider 5 times or less that year.
Other trends covered in the report included the following:
- Anxiety and depressive disorders accounted for 40% of all behavioral health visits in the first half of 2021. However, visit volume for eating disorders had the highest growth rate at 52.6%, followed by anxiety (47.9%), alcohol and substance use disorders (27.4%), depression (24.4%), and bipolar disorder (12.2%).
- Rate increases in select behavioral health disorder diagnoses were highest for patients under the age of 18, with eating disorder diagnoses for patients in the under-18 cohort increasing by 107.4% from Q1 2018 to Q2 2022, followed by depressive disorders (44%) and self-harm (2.35%).
- The share of prescriptions for treating all mental health conditions has grown annually since 2017, with mental health-related prescriptions accounting for 21.5% of all prescriptions written in 2021.
- Half of patients who visited an emergency department for depression or anxiety did not receive follow-up inpatient or residential treatment center care within 60%. Meanwhile, 9.5% of this patient population returned to the emergency department within 30 days.
“While the magnitude of the national behavioral crisis is well documented, less is known about how the pandemic changed the behavioral health care journey for patients,” Sanjula Jain, PhD, Trilliant Health chief research officer and senior vice president of market strategy, said in a news release. “Our longitudinal analysis of how Americans accessed care and were treated for behavioral health conditions reveals that, despite increased investments in technology-enabled behavioral health services and inpatient psychiatric capacity, demand continues to outpace available supply.”
Dr Jain added that the mismatch has resulted in the following:
- Fewer patients receiving specialized behavioral healthcare;
- Increased use of prescription medications;
- Higher risk for comorbidities; and
- Higher total cost of care.
“These distressing trends suggest that by the laws of economics, the post-pandemic behavioral health market will likely increase the economic burden facing the US healthcare system, which is already fast approaching 20% of GDP,” Dr Jain said.
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