Is There a Future for Telehealth in Ophthalmology?

Mosenia et al report on the use of telehealth services across 11 surgical and nonsurgical specialties, including ophthalmology, at the University of California San Francisco before, during, and after shelter-in-place orders related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite creative implementation of a hybrid care delivery system using a combination of asynchronous data from in-person testing followed by remote visits, the authors found that the surge in use of telehealth services by ophthalmologists lagged that of all other specialties when the shelter-in-place order was implemented. Unique among the specialties studied, the percentage of remotely delivered ophthalmic visits dropped dramatically within 6 months while shelter-in-place orders were still in effect. After the orders were lifted, ophthalmic use of telemedicine (1.1%) returned almost entirely to prepandemic levels, while other specialties continued to provide a considerable percentage of visits remotely (14.9% to 65.9%).