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Telemedicine’s Environmental Impact Assessed in New Research
Recent research from UCLA has revealed that telemedicine utilization in 2023 has mitigated monthly carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to the output of up to 130,000 gasoline-powered vehicles. This finding indicates that telehealth could contribute positively to efforts against climate change.
Scheduled for publication on April 22 in the esteemed American Journal of Managed Care, the study underscores the potential of telemedicine to lessen environmental impact by reducing the number of patients who need to travel to medical facilities. Dr. John N. Mafi, a co-senior author and associate professor of medicine at UCLA, suggests these insights could shape future health policy decisions.
“As Congress weighs the future of telehealth regulations established during the pandemic, our outcomes serve as crucial data for lawmakers. They emphasize telemedicine’s potential to lower the carbon footprint associated with healthcare in the U.S.,” noted Mafi.
According to the research, the U.S. healthcare system currently accounts for approximately 9% of national greenhouse gas emissions, while transportation makes up about 29%.
To derive their conclusions, researchers analyzed anonymized data from the Milliman MedInsight Emerging Experience database, focusing on nearly 1.5 million telemedicine consultations—66,000 of which occurred in rural settings—over a three-month period from April to June 2023. They identified that between 741,000 and 1.35 million of these visits would have typically required in-person attendance at healthcare facilities.
From these estimates, the study projects that telemedicine implementation has led to a reduction of CO2 emissions ranging from 21.4 million to 47.6 million kilograms each month in the U.S. This reduction corresponds to the emissions generated by approximately 61,000 to 130,000 gas-operated vehicles or the equivalent of recycling 1.8 million to 4 million trash bags.
“The contribution of the healthcare sector to the global carbon footprint is substantial,” remarked Dr. A. Mark Fendrick, professor of medicine and director of the Center for Value-Based Insurance Design at the University of Michigan, who co-authored the study. “Our findings indicate that when lower-carbon alternatives like telemedicine are implemented instead of traditional services, we can considerably diminish the environmental burden of healthcare delivery.”
Despite the promising results, researchers acknowledge certain limitations in their analysis. The data relied upon was sourced from a single, easily accessible database rather than a representative random sampling, which could affect the generalizability of the results. Additionally, the distances driven and types of vehicles included in the study were based on pre-2023 data, although it is unlikely that these factors have seen significant changes since then. Notably, there has been a decline in telemedicine adoption following the conclusion of the COVID pandemic, which could mean the researchers may have overestimated the reduction in emissions attributable to telehealth services.
In addition to Dr. Mafi and Dr. Fendrick, study co-authors include Dr. Benjo Delarmente, Artem Romanov, Manying Cui, Chi-Hong Tseng, and Dr. Catherine Sarkisian from UCLA, along with Melody Craff, Dale Skinner, and Michael Hadfield of Milliman MedInsight, and Cheryl Damberg from RAND.
The research received funding support from the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Aging.
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