How Does Telemedicine Shape Physician’s Practice in Mental Health?

Abstract

With the prevalence of digital devices and internet access, telemedicine (visiting physicians through real-time telecommunication) is becoming an important mode of service. In this work, we study whether the adoption of telemedicine has an impact on physicians' behavior in terms of scheduling related follow-up visits. To answer this question, we use a changes-in-changes (CIC) model to estimate the effect of adopting telemedicine on the length of the interval between two related visits, namely, the related visit interval (RVI). Our results show that physicians schedule related visits with shorter RVIs in the short term after adopting telemedicine. As a result, physicians can admit more patients to their panel as they adopt telemedicine for a longer time. Thus, in the long run, adoption of telemedicine results in experiencing a heavier workload and scheduling related visits with longer RVIs. The adoption effect is also spilled over to the scheduling decision made during in-office visits with a decrease in RVI length in the short term and an increase in the long term. Furthermore, we show that physicians tend to schedule more frequent follow-up visits after a telemedicine visit due to the uncertainty in a patient’s health status in a remote visit. This study sheds light on the benefits and unintended consequences of adopting telemedicine as this mode of service becomes more widely utilized.