Telehealth Usage Statistics (2026)

The CDC's survey question asks whether an adult used telemedicine at any point in the previous 12 months. That produces a large number: 30.1% in 2022, down from 37.0% in 2021.

FAIR Health counts claim lines. That produces a small number, around 5%, because a person who has one virtual visit and several in-person encounters contributes mostly in-person volume. Both are correct; a brief that mixes them is not.

The NCHS analysis found the 2021-to-2022 decline across many groups at once — by sex, income, education, region and urbanisation level — which points to normalisation of access rather than dissatisfaction in a particular segment.

In both years, women, adults with a college degree or higher and residents of more urban areas were more likely to have used telemedicine.

Among adults aged 18–64, uninsured adults were less likely to use telemedicine than those with private or public coverage. Among adults 65 and over, those with Medicare only were less likely to use it than those with additional coverage.

That is the finding with the clearest policy edge: virtual care reduces travel and time barriers, but reimbursement and coverage still gate who reaches it.

FAIR Health's 2025 readings look like a plateau with noise: telehealth fell from 5.1% of medical claim lines in August to 5.0% in September, while the share of patients with a telehealth claim rose from 14.5% in October to 15.0% in November, with regional differences of a few percent either way.

For anyone forecasting virtual volume, that is the useful baseline: a durable single-digit share of billed care, moving in fractions of a point rather than in steps.

Telehealth statistics are often quoted either from the 2020 spike or from a single specialty, and both distort the picture. The durable pattern is a level far above pre-pandemic baselines, concentrated in a few use cases, with in-person care recovering everywhere else.

For planning, the useful cut is by specialty and visit type rather than by total share. Behavioural health and follow-up consultations behave very differently from first-time diagnostic visits.

Where virtual visits are paid at parity and licensing allows it, volume holds. Where payment rules tighten or expire, volume falls regardless of patient preference. Any forecast that ignores the reimbursement calendar will be wrong for reasons unrelated to clinical value.

When reading a projection, check which payment assumptions it rests on and whether those rules are permanent or extended year to year.

Telehealth reduces travel and time barriers, and it introduces new ones: broadband quality, device access, digital confidence and language support. Aggregate access improvements can mask groups whose access got worse when a service moved online by default.

Programmes that hold a phone-only pathway open, alongside video, consistently report less drop-off among older and rural patients. That is a design decision rather than a technology limit.