A comparison of telehealth and in-person allied health practitioner service claims through the Medicare Benefits Schedule in Australia

TL;DR

This study compares telehealth and in-person allied health services in Australia before, during, and after the introduction of telehealth options during the pandemic.

Contribution

The study provides new insights into the adoption and sustainability of telehealth services for allied health professionals in Australia.

Findings

Telehealth services increased significantly in Q2 2020 but declined to 9.6% by Q4 2024.

Videoconference was more commonly used than telephone for telehealth services.

Psychological interventions dominated telehealth claims, while uptake was low for physiotherapy and related fields.

Abstract

In 2020, Australia introduced reimbursable telehealth services (videoconference and telephone) for allied health (AH) professionals in response to COVID-19 public health restrictions. This study aims to quantify and compare in-person, telephone and videoconference services for AH professionals before, during and after COVID-19 restrictions.

This study uses publicly available Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) data from January 2017 to December 2024. Service counts for in-person, telephone, and videoconference consultations were extracted across key AH professions. An interrupted time-series analysis assessed all consultations before and after MBS AH telehealth item number introduction.

A significant increase in overall MBS AH services was observed in Q2 2020 (8% increase, n = 280,854 additional claims from Q1 2020), coinciding with telephone and videoconference item number introduction. There was no significant attrition for all MBS AH services through the extraction period (reduction of 0.05% per quarter). Telehealth modalities accounted for 24.9% of MBS AH services in Q2 2020, gradually declining to 9.6% by Q4 2024. Videoconference (70.2%) was more commonly claimed than telephone (29.8%) for AH telehealth services. Psychological interventions accounted for 95.5% (n = 6,382,680) of dedicated AH videoconference, and 74.1% (n = 2,277,371) of telephone services. Low uptake of telehealth services was noted for physiotherapy, exercise physiology and podiatry.

Despite attrition through the extraction period, telephone and videoconference uptake contributed to a sustained increase in total AH service provision through the MBS. However, many AH services had low uptake. To ensure the long-term sustainability of telehealth, increased advocacy and promotion from the broader AH workforce is warranted.

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