Arvin Yaple
Pronouns: He/Him
Research Mentor(s): Antonios Koumpias
Co-Presenter: Li, Bingzhi
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Social Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Michigan-Dearborn / Other
Presentation Date: April 20
Presentation Type: Oral5
Session: Session 2 – 11am – 11:50am
Room: Breakout Room 6
Authors: Arvin Yaple
Presenter: 2
Abstract
Introduction: At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, medical professionals scrambled to move traditional in-person care to an online setting. The use of telehealth boomed during this period, and government regulators temporarily waived restrictive laws to assist with this. Our research conducts a systematic review which identifies current and relevant literature regarding the impact of these waivers, especially on mental health services. Methods: A systematic search of relevant literature was conducted in November-December 2021 among three databases: PubMed, BIOSis, and Web of Science. Using the keywords Telehealth Licensure Requirements, Out-of-state Telehealth, Telehealth Licensure Waiver, Out-of-state occupational licensure waivers, Telehealth certificate-of-need (CON) laws and, Interstate Medical Licensure Compact (IMLCC), a total of 184 articles were found. We will identify waiver-specific studies in the area of mental health and further analyze these selected articles through PRISMA criteria. We’ll then create flow diagrams for each database and integrate them to get the relationship between the effectiveness of telehealth licensure waivers and telehealth utilization in the area of mental health. Results: We expect that waivers of licensure requirements will be associated with increased telehealth utilization and heterogeneous use by patient age, race, and degree of urbanization of their residence. Moreover, we hypothesize that increased competition from out-of-state providers will reduce cost of care but also in-state physician market exit. Discussion: These findings provide qualitative evidence about the beneficial effects and unintended consequences of telehealth licensure waivers to inform the national-level and state-level policy debates about their continued implementation after the conclusion of the COVID-19 public health emergency.
Biomedical Sciences, Interdisciplinary, Public Health, Social Sciences
