Adoption of telehealth technology and services by outpatient physician practices remained flat at 44 percent in both 2018 and 2019, according to a recent Definitive Healthcare report.
For its 2019 Outpatient Telehealth Study, Definitive Healthcare surveyed physicians and administrators at outpatient physician practices about their organizations' telehealth usage. Definitive Healthcare provides data and intelligence on the healthcare provider market.
In the last two years, just 44 percent of survey respondents said their organization uses telehealth services, a 5 percent drop from 49 percent of participants who used telehealth in 2017, according to the report.
However, telehealth usage methods and services did present some shifts in 2019. Here are the models that participants reported using this year:
· Services delivered via patient portal with mobile or desktop: 55.8 percent.
· Audio/visual between originating sites: 42.5 percent.
· Electronic visits, online consults and consumer-oriented consults: 42.5 percent.
· Remote patient monitoring delivered into the home: 20.8 percent.
· Remote patient monitoring data collected from off-the-shelf devices: 12.5 percent.
Survey respondents reported an increase in all the telehealth models used in 2019, except for remote patient monitoring data collected by off-the-shelf devices, which dropped 1.7 percent from 2018.