HSD99 Telemedicine and the Utilization of Outpatient Mental Health Services by Patients with Incident Major Depressive Disorder during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Objectives

To examine the role of telemedicine in providing access to outpatient psychotherapy for children and young adults with incident major depressive disorder (MDD) before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, overall and by race and ethnicity.

Methods

Medical claims from a large, national insurer were retrospectively analyzed to identify two cohorts of individuals aged 10-26 years old, based on incident diagnosis (“index”) date of MDD (pre-COVID: March-December 2018, COVID: March-December 2020). We tracked health care utilization, utilization by site of care, modality of care, and psychotherapy

Results

The majority of patients in the two cohorts (pre-COVID: N=7,758, COVID: N=8,517) were White (78.9% and 78.8%, respectively), followed by Hispanic (11.5% and 10.9%), Black (6.6% and 7.1%), and Asian (3.0% and 3.2%). While pre-index utilization was similar between cohorts, the COVID cohort had 919 psychotherapy visits per 1,000 patients compared to 735 for the pre-COVID cohort in the month post-index. The increase in visits is largely attributable to an increase in telemedicine visits for the COVID cohort. Similarly, psychotherapy visits increased for all racial and ethnic groups in the COVID cohort compared to the pre-COVID cohort in the month post-index: 22.3% for Whites (931 visits per 1,000 patients in COVID cohort vs. 759 in pre-COVID cohort), 45.0% for Asians (951 vs. 656), 20.5% for Blacks (792 vs. 657) and 46.5% for Hispanics (860 vs. 587).

Conclusions

Telemedicine increased access to mental health services during the pandemic across races and ethnicities, but racial and ethnic disparities persisted. Health systems should capitalize on the telehealth infrastructure developed during the pandemic to sustain this increased access to care while continuing work to reduce disparities.

The full study can be viewed at National Library of Medicine .

Axeen, S., Jin, S., Lubarsky, O., Kenou, B., Chapman, R., Xie, R., & Seabury, S. (2023). HSD99 Telemedicine and the Utilization of Outpatient Mental Health Services By Patients with Incident Major Depressive Disorder during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Value in Health, 26(6), S255.