The popularity of telemedicine has soared among Minnesotans in the past decade, with urban dwellers seeking the convenience of routine care online and rural residents videochatting with distant doctors for everything from prescription refills to psychiatric sessions to cancer consults.
A first-of-its-kind report used a Minnesota database of health insurance claims and found that the number of telemedicine visits increased sevenfold from 2010 to 2015. The study is part of a special edition of the influential journal Health Affairs that assesses the national impact of telemedicine — a broad term to describe billable patient care that isn't provided face to face, including online queries and videoconferencing.
"[The study] really illustrates the multiple ways that telemedicine is being utilized in the health care system and really starts to get at the question of what's working and what's not," said Jean Abraham, a co-author of the local study and a professor in the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.
Most of the increase was in virtual visits by privately insured patients in metro areas, who used online portals such as VirtuWell to receive routine care for sore throats and skin rashes.
Such visits accounted for only 20 percent of the 11,113 telemedicine visits in Minnesota in 2010, but 60 percent of the 86,238 visits in 2015.
Patients in rural areas used telemedicine more to connect with doctors in other communities — either to avoid long drives for routine checkups or to get second opinions from specialists, the data showed.
Duluth-based Essentia Health has videoconferencing in every one of its clinics in northern Minnesota. Patients in International Falls, for example, can connect remotely with doctors in seven different specialties, including psychiatry and cardiology.
"We use it to bring the specialists to the rural environments," said Maureen Ideker, a senior telehealth adviser at Essentia, who helped set up one of the state's first programs at Tri-County Hospital in Wadena in 1994. "You can share the scarce resources."