Telemedicine Reimbursement Changes and Health Care Contact Days for Older Adults

Public health emergency waivers enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically expanded telemedicine use. Expiration of these waivers would limit access to this convenient care option for older adults, but it is unknown how expiration would affect patients' burden of care, quantified as health care contact days (days receiving in-person care).

To measure the extent to which telemedicine days experienced by older adults enrolled in traditional Medicare may supplement in-person health care contact days and to estimate how telemedicine waiver expiration could increase the number of health care contact days.

This is a cross-sectional study of the 2022 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey examining a nationally representative sample of community-dwelling adults aged 65 years or older enrolled in traditional Medicare. Data analysis was performed from March 2025 to March 2026.

The primary outcomes were total telemedicine days (days with any telemedicine service) and additional health care contact days if telemedicine waivers expired (telemedicine days converted to in-person contact days, assuming 100% substitution). Multivariable logistic and Poisson regressions evaluated associations between patient characteristics and the probability and rate of additional health care contact days.

Among 5151 community-dwelling older adults (weighted number, 27 321 585 individuals; mean [SD] age, 74.6 [7.0] years; 2496 female individuals [52.4%]), 1294 (weighted 22.7%) used telemedicine. Telemedicine use varied widely (median [IQR], 1 [1-3] telemedicine day; maximum, 91 days), with 10.5% of telemedicine users (135 respondents) accounting for 50% of all telemedicine days. If telemedicine waivers expired and all affected telemedicine services were substituted with in-person services, 74.1% of older adults (951 respondents) using telemedicine would experience at least 1 additional health care contact day, totaling 8 772 118 additional contact days. Having more chronic conditions (adjusted odds ratio for >10 conditions, 8.42; 95% CI, 5.44-13.00) and difficulty getting places (adjusted odds ratio, 1.29; 95% CI, 1.10-1.53) were associated with higher odds of additional contact days.

This cross-sectional study of older adults enrolled in traditional Medicare found that most older adults using telemedicine would experience additional health care contact days if telemedicine waivers expired and all affected telemedicine services were substituted with in-person services. The resulting burden would fall disproportionately on adults with multiple chronic conditions and difficulty getting places, potentially exacerbating access barriers for patients most in need of care.