Telehealth Dashboard
Telehealth Dashboard
Introduction
The intent of the Telehealth dashboard is to provide insights into the trends and characteristics of telehealth services in Georgia. Specifically, the dashboard includes telehealth visits stratified by year, age, sex, county, broadband internet access, payer, and urban-rural classification. The dashboard also shows the top diagnosis categories and provider specialties among telehealth visits, as well as costs and distance to service for the top procedure codes. The Telehealth dashboard is designed for use on full-screen devices. See a more detailed description of each dashboard below as well as the Methods and Limitations section for additional information on metric design.
Description of Dashboard Sheets
Overall Telehealth Utilization
Shows the trend in telehealth visit rates over time, with two dropdown menus: one for selecting payer, and one to show the trend by urban-rural classifications (binary or more detailed classification) or by internet access rate. Also shows the visit rate by county and the proportion of total visits delivered via telehealth by age and gender. Selecting a point on the trend line will subset the age-gender bar graph and the county map accordingly.
Telehealth Diagnoses and Specialties
Shows the top diagnosis categories and provider specialties for telehealth visits filtered by year, age, sex, payer, and urban-rural classification, shown as a proportion of all telehealth claims. As a comparison, the proportion of total visits with that specialty or diagnosis (total visits is the denominator) is also shown as an icon on the bar chart. When hovering over a diagnosis or specialty category, the tooltip also shows the trends over time for both total and telehealth visits for that category.
Telehealth Top Procedures
Shows the proportion of total amount paid for top procedure codes for telehealth visits filtered by year, age, sex, payer, and urban-rural classification. Also shows the corresponding in-person total amount paid for the same procedure code. Users can select a given procedure code to view the average distance to service, estimated mileage savings, and average amount paid per visit by urban-rural classification.
Methods
Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
Claims were excluded if they were denied or orphaned adjustments (adjustments for which the primary claim cannot be identified). Claims and eligibility months were also excluded for patients from outside of Georgia or for whom their age, sex, or home county could not be determined. Only primary paid claims were included.
Telehealth claims were identified as having at least one of the following criteria:
- Place of Service coded as '02' or '10'
- Procedure Modifier coded as '95', '93', 'GQ', 'GT', 'FQ', or 'G0'
- Procedure Code coded as 'T1014', 'Q3014', 'G2552', 'G2251', 'G2250', 'G2063', 'G2062', 'G2061', 'G2025', 'G2012', 'G2010', 'G0427', 'G0426', 'G0425', 'G0408', 'G0407', 'G0406', 'G0071', '99444', '99443', '99442', '99441', '99423', '99422', '99421', '98972', '98971', '98970', '98969', '98968', '98967', or '98966'
Visit
Visits represent a medical encounter on the same day by the same person and may include multiple claims within the Georgia APCD. The dashboard indicates whether the visit was delivered via telehealth or is for all visits (in-person and via telehealth).
Telehealth Visit Rate
The reported visit rates represent the proportion of telehealth visits per 1000 member months of medical coverage (p1kmpm). Visit rates are raw and have not been adjusted or “weighted” according to a target population.
Percent of Total Visits Delivered via Telehealth
The proportion of telehealth visits divided by all visits (in-person and via telehealth).
Percent of Visits by Specialty or Diagnosis Category
The proportion of visits that were treated by a given provider specialty or primary diagnosis category. Percent of visits is reported for both telehealth and total visits separately. For specialty, unknown or invalid provider specialties were excluded. For diagnosis category, medical examination/evaluation was excluded.
Percent of Total Amount Paid Delivered via Telehealth
The proportion of telehealth amount paid divided by total costs (in-person and via telehealth). Costs reflect the sum of all medical claims amount paid, including both health plan and patient paid amounts.
Average Amount Paid per Visit
The proportion of total amount paid divided by visit counts, reported for telehealth and in-person visits separately. Amount paid reflects the sum of all medical claims costs, including both health plan and patient paid amounts.
Distance to Service
Distance to service is based on the straight-line distance between the centroids of the patient and provider zip codes. Distance for telehealth visits would be the theoretical distance a patient would have to travel had the service been conducted in person. Reported as the average determined for a combination of procedure code, year, delivery (telehealth or in-person), payer, and urban or rural status.
Mileage Savings
Mileage savings are based on the in-person average distance for that procedure code and year, multiplied by the estimates of mileage costs from the 2018-2024 mileage estimates from the Internal Revenue Service. This is the estimate of mileage costs saved by using telehealth rather than in-person services.
Diagnosis Categories
Principal diagnoses were aggregated into categories via the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) Clinical Classifications Software for Services and Procedures (CSS-Services and Procedures) classification system. Excludes the Medical examination/evaluation diagnosis category as uninformative.
Broadband Internet Access
The U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimate from 2022 were used to estimate the proportion of households with broadband internet subscription by Georgia counties. The proportions are shown as percentiles.
Urban-Rural Classification
The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) Urban-Rural Classification Scheme for Counties is a six-level measure of urbanicity based on the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) county divisions for metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas.
- The dashboard shows telehealth trends, age-gender variation, and county distribution for six urban-rural classifications: Non-core, Micropolitan, Small Metro, Medium Metro, Large Fringe Metro, and Large Central Metro.
- A binary urban or rural status is also used in the dashboard, which categorizes urban counties as Small Metro, Medium Metro, Large Fringe Metro, and Large Central Metro, while rural counties are Non-core and Micropolitan counties.
Caveats and Limitations
Missing Data
This Snapshot is based on data present in the Georgia All-Payer Claims Database with service dates through September 2024. The GA APCD is still missing important payer data that will be added in the coming year. Georgia Medicaid has some incomplete data elements and Medicare Parts A and B data, as well as data from self-insured plans, were not included in this Snapshot. Metrics may thus change in subsequent releases as these data and additional historical data are added.
Data Suppression and De-Identification
Reported metrics that are derived from patient counts less than 11 individuals are suppressed and will not be included in dashboard or data. APCD data is de-identified, used, and disclosed with guidance from the US Department of Health and Human Services in accordance with section 164.514(a) of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule.