Employer telehealth is on the rise

Our findings confirm that telehealth is on the rise in the employer market.

One-third of employers already offer telehealth. In fact, for the largest organizations surveyed (organizations with more than 5,000 employees), that number is even higher—39 percent.

These numbers represent a significant increase from 2014, when only 22 percent of employers offered telehealth.

We anticipate this momentum will continue, as 49 percent of employers who had not yet deployed telehealth reported plans to add this benefit in 2016.

We identified five key reasons employers are increasingly embracing telehealth. They see telehealth as a tool to help with the following:

1. Reduce medical costs

2. Improve access to care

3. Make employees happy

4. Improve employee productivity

5. Attract new talent

Among employers that were unsure when they would add telehealth, the overall theme was a need for education regarding the benefits of telehealth and potential ROI.

We anticipate that our survey will help fill in these knowledge gaps and provide employers in the awareness and consideration phases with the information they need to make an adoption decision.

Employers have a broad vision for telehealth use cases

We surveyed employers both about the services they currently offer through telehealth and about the services they want to offer in the future—and the responses in both cases went far beyond urgent care.

Employers have expansive vision when it comes to telehealth.

After urgent care, the top five use cases for both current and future services are general health assessments, behavioral health, diet and nutrition services, diabetes counseling, and smoking cessation.

Many employers also expressed interest in more specialized services, some of which are occupational health, asthma counseling, and lactation support.

Employers seek support in utilization and reporting

Employers who operate telehealth programs today come up against two main challenges: maximizing utilization and getting adequate reporting.

Half of employers surveyed reported utilization of 10 percent or less. An experienced telehealth service can help employers improve utilization through proven practices such as timely, themed email campaigns, enrollment incentives, coupons to try the service for free, and quarterly communications across a variety of channels.

Employers who follow these best practices can expect engagement above and beyond 10 percent.

On a related note, our survey also showed that there is a reporting gap—over a third of employers didn't even have utilization data for their telehealth service.

A telehealth service vendor or health plan can assist here, providing at least monthly reports detailing not only utilization but other key metrics such as diagnoses, visit times of day, and more.

Market impact

Although there is still much to learn about the impact of a telehealth benefit for both employers and employees, our survey uncovered information that is not only valuable to employers, but that also impacts health plans, private exchanges, and health systems.

The message across all markets is that there is a demand for this service, and organizations that do not yet offer the benefit or have plans to do so risk becoming laggards.

Urgent care will not be enough to satisfy employers—they are looking for a robust telehealth offering that supports their wellness programs and specialized use cases.

Read more about how employers think about telehealth in our eBook, Telehealth Index 2016: Employer Benchmark Survey.

Claudia Rimerman is the Vice President of Channel Relationships at American Well.