The Role of Relaxed Telehealth Policy on Health Equity in Telehealth Utilization and Outcomes During the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency: A Living Systematic Review

The COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) led to some of the most sweeping changes in telehealth policy, use, and research in recent history. These changes provided natural experiments that enabled research groups to study the implications of telehealth use on access to care, patient experiences, provider experiences, clinical outcomes, and cost, specifically during the PHE. Some of these studies included analyses or sub-aims focused on health equity. While other systematic reviews focusing on telehealth related to policy changes during the PHE have been conducted, most of those systematic reviews have not focused on the ways in which telehealth ameliorated health disparities.

In 2022, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Office for the Advancement of Telehealth funded a project to conduct living systematic reviews (LSRs) to describe the current evidence measuring the association between telehealth use during the COVID-19 PHE and health equity. To conduct LSRs focused on health equity, we convened an Expert Panel to select the specific questions that we would include in our formal systematic review searches. We conducted three systematic reviews, and we planned both a primary search and a secondary (“living”) follow-up search. Methods and findings are discussed in this brief.

Please click here to read the brief.

Rural Telehealth Research Center, University of Iowa, 200 Hawkins Drive, 1008 RCP, Iowa City, IA 52242
Email: rt**********@***wa.edu
www.ruraltelehealth.org

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