Athenahealth on March 9 launched a telehealth insights dashboard to help providers, healthcare leaders and patients examine telehealth adoption rates by specialty area.
The dashboard is designed to help providers gauge telehealth's staying power within various areas of healthcare delivery. It uses de-identified data on 18.4 million appointments from 60,000 providers within Athenahealth's network between Nov. 1 and Jan. 31, and it will be updated monthly.
According to the dashboard, 33 percent of mental health appointments were conducted virtually between Nov. 1 and Jan. 31. This was the highest percentage compared to other specialties, such as primary care (17 percent), pediatrics (9 percent), cardiology (7 percent) and OB/GYN (4 percent).
The dashboard showed that during the same time period, telehealth visits were twice as likely to be scheduled for the same day than in-person appointments. Telehealth visits were also 8 percent more likely to be under 15 minutes long and 3 percent more likely to occur after-hours or on weekends.