Another ping for ideas. 
Does anyone have any ideas about where to access telemedicine data at an aggregate level (county or state)? TIA!
Great question. I can’t think of any off the top of my head… Specific data elements you’re looking for?
I think something like Zipnosis provides on their site, but by location and date, would be a great first step - Coronavirus - Zipnosis
Obviously, there are a ton of TM providers out there, and I haven’t had much luck getting info back from them.
Okay, so telemedicine visit data. Unless federal, state, and/or local authorities start collecting and reporting it, I suspect that’s going to be really hard, unless you can partner with folks in a healthcare system to get EHR data
We are working with the CDC and while we have some EHR partners, I doubt that would be enough data for what we’re hoping for. It’s definitely a hard one. I know some of the politics around reporting at least at the CDC, and it’s a big burden for many DPH, so IMHO they try not to ask for too many extra things, esp. during a crisis. And at this point, it’s not getting reported to the DPH either. I know there are claims data sets (e.g. IQVIA) that do have some indicators of telemedicine visits, but unfortunately my team does not have access at this time. Just looking to see what might be out there. My current recommendation for them is to access the up-to-date claims data sets (if we can get someone on our team to have access).
Ah, that’s another good point: do you want historical or up-to-the-moment? If historical, you could look at Medicare claims (CMS has all of them) or all-payer claims databases for the few states that have them
Ideally, since the beginning of the pandemic
As far as I know, that’s going to be tough unless you get them via EHR or retrospectively via claims. But I’ll be very interested in learning if someone else knows a source.
Yea - it would be tough to measure as I’m sure most of them are doing telemedicine over non-standard channels. One idea is using their claims data combined w/ their office foot traffic data. ie: If they’re continuing to bill but do not have foot traffic, it is telemedicine.
I don’t believe any claims datasets are part of the consortium though.
Hi @Charity_Hilton_Georgia_Tech_Research_Institute … did you have any luck finding data on telemedicine usage?
Not really. We heard that the FCC is gathering data, but it’s a long way out. They’re looking at stuff like this now - As the number of in-person visits dropped, telehealth visits increased. But the increase in telehealth visits only partially offset the drop in in-person visits. | Commonwealth Fund