Telehealth use in palliative care has declined since pandemic, study finds

Telehealth use in palliative care has declined since pandemic, study finds 
McKnights Home Care; by Adam Healy; 8/5/25 
Medicare beneficiaries are generally using less telehealth during palliative care than during the COVID-19 pandemic, but some patient cohorts continue to have high rates of virtual care use, according to a new study published in JAMA Network Open. ... “Since the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth use for palliative care has declined slightly but continued to play a sizable role in outpatient palliative care, accounting for 18.2% of specialist encounters in 2023,” the researchers said. Telehealth may be best suited for patients with certain conditions, they noted. For instance, the study indicated that patients with poor-prognosis cancers — meaning cancers that commonly cause death, rare cancers with high mortality rates or solid tumors with concurrent nonlymphatic metastasis — may benefit the most from telehealth. Virtual care use was also high among psychiatry patients, the study found.