Phoning it in – Mass. residents still lean toward in-person care as telehealth booms

 

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Phoning it in – Mass. residents still lean toward in-person care as telehealth booms    September 25, 2025 By Jennifer Smith

As the Covid-19 pandemic surged, homes became workplaces, schools, and day care centers. And with the rise of telehealth, they became remote doctors’ offices too.

Now half a decade from the first lockdowns, most major providers offer telehealth options, but new polling finds nearly two-thirds of Bay State residents are still primarily receiving their health care the old-fashioned way: in person.

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Telehealth involves a clinician providing a patient medical services, in real time or asynchronously, generally by phone or video conferencing. While technological developments like laptops and cell phones made the practice more convenient in recent decades, KFF research in March 2020 found use of telemedicine in the US was minimal. Growth was slow, hampered by irregular insurance coverage policies and hurdles like high startup costs, workflow reconfiguration, clinician buy-in, and patient interest.

That all changed in 2020. With the onset of the pandemic, usage soared. Massachusetts lawmakers passed a suite of pandemic-focused reforms to enable broad use of telehealth. The new regulations made coverage for telehealth services and cost parity between telehealth and in-person behavioral health services permanent. For primary care and chronic disease management, in person and telehealth cost parity changes were temporary.

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Two-thirds of covered outpatient visits in Massachusetts in April 2020 were telehealth visits, settling at about 31 percent of those visits over the course of the year. “As the most acute phase of the pandemic has ended,” the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission wrote in 2023, “telehealth has remained an important element of the health care delivery system.”

While the rise of telehealth in the early 2020s “did improve access to care,” an HPC spokesperson said this month, not everyone is able to use the new virtual hospital landscape. “Specific actions could be taken to further enhance access for more rural and vulnerable populations,” the spokesperson said.

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According to new polling data from the MassINC Polling Group for CommonWealth Beacon, many Massachusetts residents aren't leaning heavily into the digital health care transformation. The survey found that 37 percent had no telehealth appointments in the past year, while another 25 percent said less than half of their appointments were conducted virtually.

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More Context Early data finds telehealth is largely cost neutral (October 2022)  3 key steps for moving forward with telehealth (January 2023)  Red lights on the way to health care (September 2025)

More from CommonWealth Beacon ‘WE’RE GOING BACKWARDS’: As the primary care crisis worsens, there’s growing momentum for forcing a greater share of health care dollars to go toward the front lines. Chris Lisinski has more.  TOP PRIORITY: Gov. Maura Healey has been applying a full-court press to pass a $400 million bill aimed at strengthening Massachusetts’s research and innovation economy, but lawmakers have left it idling. Sam Drysdale of State House News Service has more.

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