Researchers Find Telemedicine may Help Reduce Use of Unnecessary Health Tests

Low-value care - medical tests and procedures that provide little to no benefit to patients - contributes to excess medical spending and both direct and cascading harms to patients. A research team from Mass General Brigham and their collaborators have found that telemedicine may help to reduce the use of low-value tests. The work is published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

"In theory, widespread adoption of telemedicine post-pandemic may influence low-value testing - such as Pap smears and prostate cancer screenings in older adults, and imaging scans for straightforward cases of low back pain," said lead author Ishani Ganguli, MD, MPH, of the Division of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of Mass General Brigham, and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. "But there was very limited evidence on this. We wanted to look at this question at a national level because there is active policy debate about whether and how Medicare should continue telemedicine coverage, hinging in large part on how telemedicine impacts care quality and spending."

Using a quasi-experimental study design, Ganguli and her colleagues analyzed 2019–2022 fee-for-service Medicare claims data from more than 2 million beneficiaries who received their care in health systems across the United States that either did or did not adopt telemedicine at high rates during the COVID-19 pandemic. This timeframe encompassed the time before and after telemedicine use skyrocketed with the pandemic.

Compared to patients in low-telemedicine systems, patients in high-telemedicine systems had slightly higher rates of total visits (including virtual or in-person) and lower use of 7 of 20 low-value tests: cervical cancer screening, screening electrocardiograms, screening metabolic panels, preoperative complete blood cell counts, preoperative metabolic panels, total or free triiodothyronine level testing for hypothyroidism, and imaging for uncomplicated low back pain. There were no significant differences in other tests. Those in high-telemedicine systems had lower spending on visits per beneficiary and on 2 of 20 low-value tests, but no differences in low-value spending overall.

The findings suggest that while virtual options may reduce barriers to care, telemedicine may also deter clinicians and patients from completing some low-value tests, especially tests like electrocardiograms and blood counts that would be done on-site during or just after an office visit.

"These findings offer further reassurance to policymakers that extending telemedicine coverage may carry benefits like lower use and spending on a number of low-value tests," said Ganguli.

Ganguli I, Lim C, Daley N, Cutler D, Rosenthal M, Mehrotra A.
Telemedicine Adoption and Low-Value Care Use and Spending Among Fee-for-Service Medicare Beneficiaries.
JAMA Intern Med. 2025 Feb 24:e248354. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2024.8354

Most Popular Now

AI-Powered CRISPR could Lead to Faster G…

Stanford Medicine researchers have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) tool to help scientists better plan gene-editing experiments. The technology, CRISPR-GPT, acts as a gene-editing “copilot” supported by AI to help...

Groundbreaking AI Aims to Speed Lifesavi…

To solve a problem, we have to see it clearly. Whether it’s an infection by a novel virus or memory-stealing plaques forming in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, visualizing disease processes...

AI Spots Hidden Signs of Depression in S…

Depression is one of the most common mental health challenges, but its early signs are often overlooked. It is often linked to reduced facial expressivity. However, whether mild depression or...

AI Model Forecasts Disease Risk Decades …

Imagine a future where your medical history could help predict what health conditions you might face in the next two decades. Researchers have developed a generative AI model that uses...

AI Tools Help Predict Severe Asthma Risk…

Mayo Clinic researchers have developed artificial intelligence (AI) tools that help identify which children with asthma face the highest risk of serious asthma exacerbation and acute respiratory infections. The study...

AI Model Indicates Four out of Ten Breas…

A project at Lund University in Sweden has trained an AI model to identify breast cancer patients who could be spared from axillary surgery. The model analyses previously unutilised information...

Smart Device Uses AI and Bioelectronics …

As a wound heals, it goes through several stages: clotting to stop bleeding, immune system response, scabbing, and scarring. A wearable device called "a-Heal," designed by engineers at the University...

AI Distinguishes Glioblastoma from Look-…

A Harvard Medical School–led research team has developed an AI tool that can reliably tell apart two look-alike cancers found in the brain but with different origins, behaviors, and treatments. The...

ChatGPT 4o Therapeutic Chatbot 'Ama…

One of the first randomized controlled trials assessing the effectiveness of a large language model (LLM) chatbot 'Amanda' for relationship support shows that a single session of chatbot therapy...

Overcoming the AI Applicability Crisis a…

Opinion Article by Harry Lykostratis, Chief Executive, Open Medical. The government’s 10 Year Health Plan makes a lot of the potential of AI-software to support clinical decision making, improve productivity, and...

Dartford and Gravesham Implements Clinis…

Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust has taken a significant step towards a more digital future by rolling out electronic test ordering using Clinisys ICE. The trust deployed the order communications...