April 23, 2021 – Vizient, Inc. (Irving, TX) has released an analysis of data that shows telehealth visits trending at roughly 22% of all patient visits for January 2021, a significant increase from 0.3% of visits prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Vizient says that the analysis of more than 66 million patient visits, across 96,000 providers and 18,000 locations since January 2020 shows that telehealth has become a common method of care, with certain specialties in higher demand.
Telehealth visits for Behavioral Health and Neurology continue to be in high demand by patients at 68% and 40% respectively.
The data, derived from the Clinical Practice Solutions Center, developed by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and Vizient, shows that in April 2020, telehealth visits spiked to 65% of all visits as total ambulatory visits dropped by 41% from the previous month.
Without this quick shift to virtual care, more than 200,000 patient visits wouldn’t have taken place that month, Vizient says.
The data also showed how demographics and social determinants of health affect the use of telehealth:
- Patients age 61 and older had the highest volume of total visits from April-December but lower rates of telehealth than other adults by December 2020.
- Medicaid patients had fewer virtual visits than patients with private insurance and Medicare.
- Medicare patients were also more likely than privately insured or Medicaid patients to use a phone for their virtual visits rather than a computer.