Disparate healthcare access and telehealth-based hybrid consultations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: The coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic led to rapid expansion of telehealth services. This was speculated to improve healthcare access among underserved populations, including individuals unable to take time off work or arrange transportation.

Objective: We completed a quality improvement project to evaluate the feasibility of hybrid consultations that combined televisits and abbreviated in-person visits for neuromuscular referrals.

Methods: Using a censoring date of August 5, 2021, we reviewed all outpatient neuromuscular consultations from August 5, 2020 to February 5, 2021. For both hybrid and traditional in-person consultations, we reviewed no-show rates, completion rates of ordered diagnostic workup, and billing codes. For hybrid consultations only, we also reviewed intervals between initial televisit and subsequent examination and rates of video-enhanced versus audio-only televisits.

Results: During the study period, we completed 153 hybrid and 59 in-person new-patient consultations (no-show rates 9% and 27% respectively.) For hybrid consultations, 77% and 73% of laboratory and imaging studies were completed respectively, compared to 89% and 91% for in-person consultations. For hybrid visits, average RVUs (a marker for reimbursement) per consultation depended on whether audio-only televisits were billed as telephone calls or E/M visits per insurance payer rules, while video-enhanced televisits were uniformly billed as E/M visits. This resulted in average RVUs between 2.09 and 2.26, compared to 2.30 for in-person consultations.

Conclusions: Telehealth-based hybrid neuromuscular consultations are feasible with minor caveats. However, the future of telehealth may be restricted by decreasing reimbursement rates particularly for audio-only televisits, limiting its potential to improve healthcare access.