Hospital systems around the country are still managing the effects of COVID-19 and seeking to understand how the pandemic will change the healthcare industry in the future.
- Between March 2 and April 14, 2020 NYU Langone Health reported Virtual Urgent Care visits increased 683 percent and Non-Urgent Video Visits grew 4,345 percent.
- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reported that before COVID only 14,000 patients received care through telehealth each week. During the pandemic–from mid-March to July–more than 10 million patients have received care through a telehealth service, roughly a 182% increase. Providers also reported that telehealth interactions increased from 9 percent of all visits to 51 percent during the pandemic.
- At Bright.md, we have seen unprecedented utilization of our asynchronous virtual care product, SmartExam, as well. When comparing April 2019 to April 2020, we have seen a 600 percent increase across our customers, with rates as high as 1,200 percent for some health systems. Also, we have seen a 2,000 percent increase of net new patients across the Bright.md virtual care platform.
All of the data points to an important, if obvious, conclusion: more patients are using virtual care than ever before.
Why is this important to health systems now? Because we have jumped into a new phase of telehealth adoption. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, a J.D. Power U.S. Telehealth Satisfaction Study (Source) predicted an increase in patient telehealth adoption across the United States would be 15-25% in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused virtual care adoption to far surpass those expectations.