It’s not surprising in this time of social distancing, but telemedicine has taken off while we’ve been staying in our homes.
Excellus Blue Cross – Blue Shield says doctors seeing their patients over video and the internet has expanded massively in the last month. Excellus officials say it’s a nearly vertical rise on their graphs.
Marya Vande-Doyle, director of workplace wellness and telemedicine for Excellus BlueCross BlueShield, sayd “It’s not an overstatement to say that patients and their providers have wholeheartedly embraced this method of care.”
Excellus BCBS members logged nearly 40,000 telemedicine visits between January 1 and April 3, or about 14,500 more visits than were made in all of last year. In 2019, the health plan had a total of 23,767 telemedicine visits. Extrapolating its member experience across the entire state population, Excellus BCBS estimates that New Yorkers used telehealth benefits 470,000 times in the first three months of 2020.