Other findings

The Fair Health study noted other findings, across a range of health care delivery models, including:

In 2020 as in previous years, more claim lines were submitted for females than males in most age groups in the places of service in which FAIR Health studied gender-related patterns—retail clinics, urgent care centers, telehealth, ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs), and emergency rooms (ERs).
However, in some places of service, such as retail clinics, urgent care centers, ASCs and ERs, the gap between males and females narrowed. For example, in ERs, in the age group 61-70, the male and female shares were approximately equal (50%) in 2020, a change from 2019, when the female share had been 52% and the male share 48%. The researchers said that this trend bears monitoring in the future.
In 2020, the five states in which retail clinic claim lines constituted the greatest percentage of medical claim lines were (from greatest to least) Arkansas, Missouri, Rhode Island, Maine, and Minnesota. In 2018, Minnesota had ranked first in this list; in 2019, it ranked third, and in 2020 it fell to fifth.
Connecticut, which had been fourth from the bottom in its use of telehealth as a percentage of all medical claim lines by state in 2019, rose to fifth from the top in 2020. In 2020, exposure to communicable diseases joined the list of most common diagnostic categories in retail clinics, urgent care centers, and telehealth. This category largely was associated with testing and/or treatment for COVID-19 when a patient was exposed to the condition.

The study concluded by saying the new data gives health care stakeholders more insight into how the pandemic has changed health care delivery in the U.S.

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7,000% increase in telehealth utilization during pandemic

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