For the study, Epic researchers examined more than 35 million telehealth visits conducted between March 2020 and May 2022 using data from the EHR vendor’s Cosmos dataset.
The findings suggest that telehealth isn’t driving more in-person care encounters — a result that has significant implications for policy, especially as telehealth use remains high compared to pre-pandemic levels.
Researchers said that telehealth visits might even be replacing in-person visits entirely in specialties like genetics and nutrition. Genetics telehealth visits, for example, only required follow-ups 4% of the time.
