Telehealth White Paper Released: Primary Care Telehealth Practice Needs Assessment and Patient Survey Report

CTC-RI is excited to announce the completion of a white paper, "Primary Care Telehealth Practice Needs Assessment and Patient Survey Report: Rhode Island Telehealth Project.” The paper summarizes the results of the CTC-RI-led Telehealth Needs Assessment that was informed by responses from 47 RI primary care practices and over 900 patients.

The Practice/Patient Needs Assessment was launched in August 2020 with funding from UnitedHealthcare and authorized CARES Act funding. The survey gather perspectives on the rapid switch to telehealth with the onset of COVID-19 and found that 91% of practices began telehealth usage only after the pandemic began in March 2020.

From the perspective of the practices, top benefits of telehealth included improved work experience, increased patient access, reduction in no-shows, staff ability to work from home, and the ability to bill for on-call services. Most-cited barriers included reimbursement, technology issues, and start-up costs.

In addition to the white paper’s continued potential to inform state policy and practices, the local data collected through the Telehealth Practice/Patients Needs Assessment was instrumental in identifying topics for the Telehealth Webinar Series, as well as in designing the Telehealth Learning Collaborative.