Telemedicine flourished amid the pandemic, here’s how to keep it going – and why

In 2014, the Maryland Health Care Commission (MHCC) issued a comprehensive report, with excellent recommendations to help expand the use of what is known as telemedicine or telehealth. Here’s the basic idea: Since most people have access to smartphones or computers, some aspects of health care can and should go online. This wasn’t a revolutionary notion, given the general migration of most industries, such as retail and travel, to online platforms. Health care had been slow to the game, however, and MHCC noted that in the prior year, only 16 practitioners in the state had submitted telemedicine claims to payers, representing a very small percentage of annual health care visits by Marylanders.