Telehealth Visits in Health Centers Serving Low-Income Patients in California: Final Results from the Connected Care Accelerator Initiative (2022-2024).

Abstract

Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) are outpatient health centers that provide primary care and limited specialty-care services to nearly 30 million low-income patients. Prior to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, FQHCs rarely delivered audio-only or video telehealth visits. However, with both temporary and permanent policy changes to facilitate telehealth use at the state and federal levels, telehealth has become an important modality of care. In 2023, approximately 9 percent of FQHC visits in the United States and 20 percent of FQHC visits in California occurred via video or audio-only visits delivered into patients' homes. In this study, the authors summarize data on the use of in-person, audio-only, and video health visits during September 2022 to August 2024, a period that included the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency in May 2023 and beyond. These data were collected to evaluate the impact of the Connected Care Accelerator program, which is an effort launched by the California Health Care Foundation in July 2020 to support health centers in implementing telehealth for low-income patients in California. This study is the final in a series of studies that were published from 2021 to 2024.