The Medical Care Section of the American Public Health Association announces the 2022 Award Winning Paper from the student competition in health services research: “Telemental health use is associated with lower health care spending among Medicare beneficiaries with major depression.” The primary author was Maria T. Peña, PhD, MSc, Department of Management, Policy and Community Health, School of Public Health, University of Texas in Houston, TX, assisted by 5 Texas-based coauthors. The full paper is published in the current issue.1

Among patients in Texas with major depression, Peña et al1 used prepandemic (2014–2019) Texas Medicare claims data (parts A, B, and D) to analyze the relationship between telemental health (audio only) and both Medicare spending and utilization among patients over age 50, adjusting for patient demographics, programmatic, and clinical factors. The question the authors sought to answer was whether, under prepandemic policies, Medicare costs and/or utilization were higher among those with major depression who used telemental health services compared to those who did not.

In general, beneficiaries who were prepandemic telemental health users were more likely to be eligible for Medicaid, live in a lower-income rural county, and have a qualifying disability and higher comorbidity score than non-telemental health users. Adjusting for model covariates, the telemental health group had lower overall per member per year predicted spending, inpatient admissions, and emergency department visits than non-telemental health users.

As the study focuses solely on Texas and the prepandemic years, further work is needed to evaluate more recent data, variation in state-level health policies, the impact of factors such as patient education level and willingness to use telehealth, as well as the provider’s willingness to prescribe telehealth. Irrespective of these limitations, the study makes an important contribution to the literature using sophisticated statistical methods and a large state-level dataset.

We appreciate the opportunity given to the Medical Care Section student mentoring program through the publication support of the journal editors, Drs Allison and Kiefe.

1. Peña MT, Lindsay JA, Li R, et al. Telemental health use is associated with lower health care spending among Medicare beneficiaries with major depression. Med Care. 2024;62:132–139.