Telehealth is Eco-Friendly

Researchers estimate that transportation-related carbon emissions for outpatient healthcare were cut nearly in half in 2020 as patients stayed home and flocked to telehealth.

The surge in the use of telehealth in 2020 saw a corresponding and dramatic drop in greenhouse gasses created by patients otherwise traveling to ambulatory care venues, a new study shows.

"The rapid and widespread adoption of telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic has had significant environmental health benefits, primarily through reduction in transportation-associated emissions," the study authors wrote.

"If the US healthcare system were to maintain or expand upon current levels of telehealth utilization, additional reductions in GHG emissions would potentially be achieved through impacts on practice design. Ambulatory visit carbon intensity would be an effective way to measure these changes," the researchers wrote.

The study –- published in the August issue of The Journal of Climate Change and Health -- estimates that greenhouse gas emissions had been steadily rising from an estimated 18,473 tons of carbon emissions in 2015 to 19,569 tons in 2019, before falling off a cliff in 2020, dropping to 10,537 tons during the pandemic.

Another metric, the carbon-intensity of outpatient visits, was cut in half over the five years examined, a decreased from 8 kg CO₂-eq per visit in 2015 to 4 kg CO₂-eq in 2020. While the carbon-intensity was falling from 2015 to 2019, it saw its biggest decline in 2020.

"At the same time, telehealth visits had been growing quickly, at 39.3% per year through 2019, and then jumped in 2020 by 108.5%, for an overall increase of 669.6% or 53.2% per year during 2015–2020," the study noted.

The retrospective review relied on outpatient data from more than 600,000 patients at an unnamed health system in the Pacific Northwest. The researchers calculated average distance traveled to the care venue – 17.4 miles -- and calculated the transportation-related GHG emissions generated by an estimated 194 million automobile miles, 2.1 million bus miles, and 2.1 million bicycle miles traveled by patients for in-person visits in 2015–2020.

From 2015 to 2020, the health system saw 15.6 million total outpatient visits increased at 3.2% annually, to 2.7 million. Telehealth visits increased by an average of 53.2% annually while in-person visits saw modest gains of 1.5% annually until 2020, when they declined 46.2%.

"In-person outpatient visits had been increasing at 1.5% per year through 2019, only to decline by 46.2% in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, yielding an overall decline during the study period of 43.0% (8.1% per year)," the study said.  

The study authors said their results "likely underestimates emissions reductions."

"We did not account for decreased commuting by healthcare providers conducting telehealth visits from home," they wrote. "Furthermore, the environmental benefit of telehealth may not be limited to reductions in transportation-associated emissions if increased virtual care permits healthcare systems to care for more patients without increasing outpatient clinic space."