Center for Connected Health Policy

FOR CONNECTED POLICY (CCHP) Written by Mei Kwong, Executive Director of CCHP W hen it became clear that the United States was dealing with a highly infectious pandemic in early 2020, policymakers, health care systems, and providers immediately scrambled to try to address not only the immediate health care needs caused by the virus, but also how to curb the transmission of it. One tool that was quickly turned to had existed for decades but was not widely utilized in the nation: telehealth. Telehealth is the use of technology to provide health services when the two parties are not in the same location. As of February 2020, it had not been heard about much beyond health care circles. “Telehealth” was not a part of the public’s vernacular. However, that changed with the advent of COVID-19. Telehealth seemed ideally primed to be THE RESOURCE CENTER FOR NATIONAL TELEHEALTH POLICY