The frequency with which Americans are using telehealth to receive some of their health care, which rose considerably during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, has declined since doctors returned to their offices and fear of contagion lessened.

Even so, the use of telehealth is far more common than it was before the COVID-19 public health emergency.

A new analysis of telehealth utilization produced the following findings:

  • Telehealth outpatient visits have declined since the early months of the pandemic.
  • Even amid the general decline in telehealth visits, they remain higher than they were before the pandemic.
  • The non-elderly are using telehealth more than the elderly.
  • Although telehealth is often viewed as a useful tool in extending providers’ reach into underserved rural areas, rural and urban patients are using telehealth at similar rates.
  • Use of telehealth to manage chronic medical conditions is greater than it was before the pandemic but less than it was in the crisis’s early days.

Learn more about how the use of telehealth changed at the inception of the pandemic and how it has changed over the past two years in the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker article “Outpatient telehealth use soared early in the COVID-19 pandemic but has since receded.”