ArticleHealth services research2025
Telehealth and disparities in opioid use disorder treatment: Medicaid enrollees versus privately insured individuals.
Article in Health services research, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Telehealth and disparities in opioid use disorder treatment: Medicaid enrollees versus privately insured individuals.Health services research · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo determine how the rise of telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic impacted Medicaid enrollees' access to opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment. DATA SOURCES AND STUDY
settingElectronic health records from Northwestern Medicine, a large midwestern academic health system, from January 1, 2019 to December 31, 2021. STUDY
designThe exposure was the expansion of telehealth services during the COVID-19 pandemic. A difference-in-differences design was used to determine the impact of telehealth on the probability of receiving any OUD care, any in-person OUD care, and any telehealth OUD care in a month. DATA COLLECTION/EXTRACTION
methodsThe study included Medicaid and privately insured patients older than 18 years of age, diagnosed with OUD, who had any encounter with the Northwestern Medicine system. All outpatient visits with OUD as the primary diagnosis were included in the analysis. There were 486 individuals in the sample and 17,496 person-month observations. PRINCIPAL
findingsAfter the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Medicaid enrollees are 4.5 percentage points (percentage change, 43.7%; 95% confidence interval [CI] 8.7 to 0.3 percentage points; p = 0.035) less likely to receive any OUD care in a month, relative to privately insured patients. While no statistically significant differences in the likehood of receiving in-person OUD care were detected between the groups after exposure, we did observe that Medicaid enrollees are 3.6 percentage points (percentage change 64.2%; 95% CI 6.0 to 1.1 percentage points; p = 0.004) less likely to receive any telehealth OUD care in a month relative to privately insured patients.
conclusionsWhile those with private insurance were able to maintain OUD treatment during the pandemic by supplementing in-person care with telehealth, Medicaid enrollees experienced a drop in overall OUD treatment rates due to lower telehealth use. The rise of telehealth for OUD treatment might contribute to widening care gaps for Medicaid enrollees.
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