• Posted May 12, 2026

Telemedicine Not Breaking The Bank, Also Not Expanding Patient Access

Telemedicine appears to be breaking in the United States in both access and cost, a new study says.

It’s not costing the United States more in medical spending, but it also hasn’t led to dramatic expansion of access to health care, according to findings published May 11 in JAMA Network Open.

When the feds responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by relaxing telemedicine rules in 2020, some experts worried that the move would drive up healthcare costs, researchers said.

At the same time, proponents hoped the wider availability of telemedicine would help people without easy access to doctors.

“Our findings suggest neither prediction came true on a national scale,” said lead researcher Dr. John Mafi, an associate professor-in-residence at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine in Los Angeles.

“As telemedicine use grew, visits and spending in heavy users tracked closely with patterns in lighter users,” Mafi said in a news release. “That is reassuring for anyone worried about ballooning costs, but more sobering for anyone hoping telemedicine would close longstanding gaps in access. At least so far, it looks more like a substitute for in-person care than a true expansion of it.”

For the study, researchers analyzed medical claims for more than 3 million U.S. adults who had 120 million medical visits and incurred more than $178 billion in spending from 2019 to 2023.

Overall, researchers found that telemedicine visits fell by 2.4% during the study period and spending dropped 0.5%. However, these results were not statistically significant, meaning they might be explained by chance.

Urban dwellers had 4.4% fewer visits and 2.3% lower spending, while there were 3.4% more visits and 3.8% higher spending among rural residents – but again, these numbers were not statistically significant.

Researchers said it’s important to track these trends because the relaxed rules governing telemedicine are due to expire in 2027, and lawmakers continue to debate whether to extend or modify them.

These results should be considered an early read on a still-evolving medical landscape, said senior researcher Dr. Katherine Kahn, a professor of medicine at UCLA.

“Our analysis runs only through late 2023, when telemedicine use was still settling into a new equilibrium,” she said in a news release.

“Much more work is needed to understand telemedicine’s longer-term effects on quality of care, health outcomes and spending, and whether those effects differ across the diverse populations who depend on it,” Kahn said. “Policymakers should keep monitoring closely as the evidence base matures.”

More information

The American Hospital Association has more on telehealth.

SOURCES: UCLA, news release, May 11, 2026; JAMA Network Open, May 11, 2026