About one in seven adult respondents in a recent survey said that their healthcare providers offered telehealth visits, and just 4 percent reported having had a telehealth visit in the previous year. However, many of these individuals expressed interest in having such a visit in the future.
The research, collected from the University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging conducted earlier this year, included responses from nearly 2,000 adults aged 50 to 80 who were asked their experiences with and opinions of telehealth. For the study, telehealth visits were defined as healthcare visits by video using smartphones or computers.
The findings also revealed that more than half of respondents did not know if their providers offered telehealth visits (55 percent), while about one in three older adults indicated their healthcare providers did not offer telehealth visits (31 percent).
Among older adults who had a telehealth visit, about half said the overall convenience of a telehealth visit was better than an in-person office visit (47 percent), while 36 percent believed an in-person office visit was better, and 18 percent thought the overall convenience was the same.
However, more than half indicated that in-person office visits were better than telehealth visits with regard to feeling cared for (56 percent), communicating with the healthcare professional (55 percent), and the amount of time spent with the healthcare professional (53 percent). Additionally, more than half viewed in-person office visits as better than telehealth visits in terms of overall quality of care (58 percent).
Meanwhile, among older adults whose providers do not offer telehealth visits, nearly half expressed interest (very or somewhat) in a telehealth visit with a primary care provider (48 percent), while two in five were interested in visits with a specialist (40 percent). More than one in three were interested in visits with a mental health professional (35 percent).
Nonetheless, skepticism around telehealth is still very much real; older adults expressed the following concerns about telehealth visits: that healthcare providers would not be able to do a physical exam (71 percent), that quality of care would not be as good as a face-to-face visit (68 percent), privacy (49 percent), not feeling personally connected to the healthcare professional (49 percent), difficulty using the technology (47 percent), and difficulty seeing or hearing the healthcare professional (39 percent).
In the end, the researchers concluded, “While most older adults are uncertain whether their healthcare providers currently offer telehealth visits, and very few have actually experienced such a visit, many older adults expressed interest in a telehealth visit in the future.”
