While telehealth is not novel, its use has recently grown rapidly as healthcare restrictions were introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic. To examine the state of telehealth education at MD-granting medical schools in the United States, Dr. Dhruv Khullar and Dr. Jiani Yu, both assistant professors of population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine, and colleagues conducted an online survey of senior medical education leaders. In their new Healthcare study, the researchers found that 40 of 71 respondents (56.3%) reported having some telehealth curricula in 2019. First year of accreditation played a role, with 69.8% of schools accredited before 2002 having telehealth in the curricula and only 23.1% of schools accredited after 2002 having telehealth in the curricula. Because telehealth has only recently been used widely, a lack of experienced faculty who feel comfortable teaching it is a main barrier, with limited curricular time and other logistics factoring in. More information is needed as this study timeline preceded the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is a good baseline to work off of to ensure curriculum evolution continues.
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