Mental Health Service Use, Spending Jumped During Pandemic, Remain Elevated

Spending on mental health services among Americans with private health insurance has surged since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, aresearch letter published today inJAMA Health Forum has found. The results suggest that spending on mental health services is continuing to rise even as the use of telehealth has plateaued.Jonathan H. Cantor, Ph.D., of the RAND Corporation and colleagues examined data from 1,554,895 mental health service claims to ascertain trends in mental health services use and spending during three periods:Pre-pandemic, before the declaration of the public health emergency (January 1, 2019, to March 12, 2020).Acute phase of the pandemic, before vaccines were available (March 13, 2020, to December 17, 2020).Post-acute phase of the pandemic (December 18, 2020, to August 31, 2022).The researchers found that during the acute phase, in-person visits decreased by 39.5% and telehealth visits increased roughly 1,019.3% (roughly tenfold) compared with the year prior. Jointly, this represented a 22.3% increase in overall service use. During the post-acute phase, telehealth visits stabilized at approximately 1,068.3% of pre-pandemic levels, whereas in-person visits increased 2.2% each month over the period. By August 2022, in-person visits reached 79.9% of pre-pandemic levels, and overall mental health service use was 38.8% higher than before the pandemic.During the acute phase, per capita expenditures for mental health services were 29.5% higher compared with th...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: COVID-19 pandemic JAMA Health Forum Jonathan Cantor mental health services public health emergency telehealth Source Type: research