Telehealth and Emergency Department Use Among Commercially Insured, Medicaid, and Medicare Patients Receiving Systemic Cancer Therapy in Washington State After COVID-19.

Objective: In oncology, telehealth services were adopted as a means of mitigating the risk of COVID-19 transmission. We hypothesized that Medicaid enrollees would have less access to telehealth than commercially insured or Medicare enrollees during the pandemic, resulting in higher rates of emergency department (ED) visits during systemic cancer treatment.

Methods: Linking Washington State SEER records with commercial, Medicaid, and Medicare records, we evaluated adults with new solid tumor malignancies who received initial systemic treatment before the COVID-19 pandemic (January 1, 2017-December 31, 2019) and after the pandemic (March 1, 2020-November 30, 2021). Poisson and logistic regressions were used to evaluate differences in the number of office visits, telehealth visits, and ED visits in the 3 months after starting systemic anticancer treatment between insurance groups before versus after the pandemic.

Results: Among 2,936 commercial, 2,039 Medicaid, and 7,333 Medicare enrollees who met inclusion criteria, office-based visits fell substantially for all groups during the COVID-19 period. Medicare enrollees had fewer telehealth visits while Medicaid had more telehealth visits, compared with commercial enrollees. ED visits declined for all patients, but there were no differences between insurance groups.

Conclusions: In Washington State, COVID-19 resulted in a substantial decrease in office-based visits, with an accompanying increase in telehealth visits partially offsetting the difference in overall access to care. ED visit rates fell substantially, without differences between insurance groups.