In the first year, face-to-face counseling decreased by 40%, while remote counseling increased 10 times.
The study found that since the COVID-19 pandemic, the cost of mental health counseling in the United States has skyrocketed and continues to rise. This is reported by the medical medicine web journal “Health Day” on the 28th (local time) based on a research letter from Rand Institute researchers published on the 《JAMA Health Forum》.
The researchers obtained data from Castrite Health, a US health insurance management company, and analyzed the numbers and claims of more than 1.5 million registered employer-based private health plans for 7 million American adults over three periods. These are 2019, the year before the onset of the pandemic, March-December 2020, the early stage of the pandemic, and December 2020-August 2022, the middle and late stages of the pandemic.
The analysis found that over the entire pandemic, from March 2020 to August 2022, U.S. adults’ access to mental health services increased by 39% and spending by 54%. Average spending over this period increased from $2.3 million per 10,000 beneficiaries per month before the pandemic to over $3.5 million per month. In addition, researchers have found that there has been a steady increase in all types of mental illness, including depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
In the early days of the pandemic, from March to December 2020, face-to-face consultations decreased by 39.5% due to “social distancing”, while the number of remote consultations increased 10 times compared to the previous year. Taken together, the total number of psychiatric consultations in the early days of the pandemic increased by 22% compared to the previous year.
Since then, the number of face-to-face consultations has increased again, while the number of remote consultations has gradually decreased, but the growth has remained stable. From December 2020 to August 2022, face-to-face consultations increased by 2.2% monthly, returning to about 80% from the previous level in August 2022. It has also been found that remote counseling continues to maintain a certain level.
Jonathan Kanter, a policy researcher at the Rand Institute and lead researcher, warned that insurers are likely to cut coverage going forward if consultations and associated medical costs continue to rise. “Insurers may be looking for ways to cut costs, which could lead to less flexibility in telepsychological counseling,” he said.
This document can be found at the following link (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2808748?resultClick=1).