Over the past few years the common use of telehealth technology has been rapidly expanding. While remote models of care have been successfully used in rural communities for decades, the adoption of telehealth rapidly expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic, narrowing some gaps in care access and equity while exacerbating health care inequities in other ways. At the request of the Social Security Administration, the National Academies hosted a workshop on March 9 and 10, 2022 to examine the use of telehealth for patient evaluation. The workshop explored the evolution of telehealth and commonly used terminology, the impact of inequities in digital access, privacy and cybersecurity concerns, its use in a variety of allied health and medical specialties for patient evaluation, and interstate licensure related to providing telehealth care. This publication provides a high-level summary of the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

Table of Contents


Front Matter
1 Introduction
2 Telehealth Overview
3 Telehealth and the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency
4 The Use of Telehealth for Evaluations by Clinical Specialties
5 Telehealth Access
6 The Experiences of Other Health Care Systems
7 Licensure, Privacy, and Security
8 Reflections
Appendix A: References
Appendix B: Statement of Task
Appendix C: Workshop Agenda
Appendix D: Planning Committee and Speaker Biographies
Appendix E: Acronyms and Abbreviations