By the end of the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, health services utilization had returned to their pre-pandemic levels overall, but some shifts have occurred. That’s just one of the findings of the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science’s The Use of Medicines in the U.S. 2023: Usage and Spending Trends and Outlook to 2027 recently released report. And while spending on medications will continue to grow, driven by new oncology drugs, traditional areas of growth such as immunology and diabetes will instead help to slow that growth.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the institute has tracked patient visits, including both telehealth and in-person ones; screening and diagnostic tests; elective procedures; and new prescriptions for its IQVIA Health Services Utilization Index. Speaking at a May 18 webinar on the report’s findings, Michael Kleinrock, research director for the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science, explained that overall, those services have returned to 100% of pre-pandemic levels as of the fourth quarter of 2022. However, some shifts among the four elements have occurred.