The Epic Research telehealth tracker shows that telehealth visits represented 7.1% of all medical appointments in July 2026. There is a wide range of usage between medical specialties, as mental health clinicians conduct 29.6% of visits remotely, endocrinologists 12%, primary care physicians 7.5% and urgent care providers 2.5% – this last percentage is the smallest among all tracked departments. It is notable that urgent care, which served as the foundation for the direct-to-consumer virtual industry, has the lowest adoption rate within established outpatient clinics. If you are calculating the volume of virtual services for the upcoming year, you should use those specific ratios for each department instead of a single goal for the entire practice.
The percentage of telehealth visits categorized by specialty
Epic Research calculates the percentages using electronic health record data from its customer base. The data for July 2026 is as follows:
| Specialty | Telehealth percentage of visits |
|---|---|
| Mental health | 29.6% |
| Endocrinology | 12% |
| Obstetrics | 10% |
| Geriatrics | 7.7% |
| Primary care | 7.5% |
| Gynecology | 5.5% |
| Surgery | 3.9% |
| Pediatric primary care | 2.6% |
| Urgent care | 2.5% |
| All visits | 7.1% |
The difference between the highest and lowest percentages is almost twelve times. Any single average that you apply to a diverse schedule will result in inaccuracies for most departments.
The reasons urgent care is at the bottom while virtual urgent care is common
The market for direct-to-consumer virtual urgent care is significant and active – but it does not occur within the standard schedules of most existing medical practices. It is a separate path that involves different patients, unique brand names and a specific group of doctors who hold licenses in many states.
This difference is important for your planning – a practice that observes news reports about virtual care and changes 15% of its urgent care appointments to video is mimicking a competitor rather than its own operations. Patients who seek a virtual urgent care appointment at 9:00 PM do not wait for a clinic to provide a virtual appointment at 2:00 PM.
The reverse situation is also true – if you plan to create a specific on demand virtual service with its own business structure and operating hours, you should expect it to function as a separate department rather than representing 2.5% of a standard clinic schedule.
The reasons a combined telehealth goal is an ineffective planning tool
“We want 10% of visits to be telehealth” is an easy objective to state but it is an ineffective tool for management. It creates an average across specialties that have actual usage rates that differ by ten times – this method causes two problems at the same time – mental health departments will lack enough virtual appointments to meet demand, while urgent care and surgery departments will have empty virtual appointments that no one schedules.
The allocation of appointments for each specialty is a better replacement. To do this you can use the published rate for each specialty as a starting point. You then apply that rate to the weekly number of visits for that department and design the schedule based on those results.
An example using six clinicians
As an example consider a clinic that employs three primary care physicians, two mental health clinicians and one endocrinologist. Each clinician sees about 80 patients per week.
- Primary care – For 240 total visits at a rate of 7.5%, there are approximately 18 virtual appointments each week – this equals about 6 visits for each doctor. You should group the appointments together in one half day block – this helps you manage exam room use and allows the doctor to stay focused on one type of visit.
- Mental health – For 160 visits at a rate of 29.6%, there are approximately 47 virtual appointments each week – this equals nearly 24 visits for each clinician – those clinicians could work three days remotely. Mental health care can function as a virtual service by default, where patients only come to the office if they request it.
- Endocrinology – For 80 visits at a rate of 12%, there are approximately 10 virtual appointments each week – this fits well into one afternoon of virtual visits that you can schedule for discussing laboratory results.
The total for the clinic is approximately 75 virtual visits out of 480 total visits – this is 15.6%, which is much higher than the national average of 7.1% – this result happens because of the specific mix of specialties. A single goal for the whole clinic would have created an incorrect schedule for all three departments.
The consistency of those ratios for scheduling purposes
The following information is the quietly useful part – it shows that telehealth use reached approximately 21% of all medical visits in the middle of April 2020. The use of those services decreased during 2021 and 2022. It remains at an even level since the middle of 2023, although specific medical fields show different rates of use. You are organizing schedules based on a consistent level of activity. The templates you create with the percentages are likely to remain accurate for multiple months.
To perform a check from the perspective of an insurance provider, the CMS Medicare Telehealth Trends Snapshot provides data on fee-for-service use until March 31, 2026 – this resource receives new data every three months and includes services conducted only via telephone. It tracks a group of patients that is different from the group in the electronic health record data from Epic. On that account the specific totals will vary. You should use this data to identify general patterns in the industry.
In which situations should your specific percentages differ from the standard?
The average rate for the entire country is a beginning value – three specific environmental elements provide a reason to change that value:
- The ages and health conditions of the patients – A group of patients who are elderly and have many long term illnesses acts differently than a group of young patients with private insurance – those differences depend on if family members help the patients or if the patients lack transportation.
- Access to high speed internet and language services – if a large number of your patients lack the technology to maintain a video connection, your maximum possible rate is lower than the national average. You should organize telephone services as a planned choice.
- The patterns of patients who miss appointments – you should analyze those patterns for each visit type. The presence of digital tools is also important. Epic Research found that patients who used an online portal had a 6.2% rate of missing appointments, while those without a portal had a 7.9% rate – a 21.5% relative reduction across more than 1.6 billion 2024 outpatient visits.
What you should do with this information
On the next business day, you should collect data from the previous year regarding visits that clinicians completed. You must separate this data by medical specialty and the method used for the visit. The next step is to calculate your own percentages. Compare each of your rates to the data that organizations have published. If your rates are much lower, you must determine if the cause is a lack of patient interest or the way you design your schedules. If your rates are much higher, your own local data is more reliable for your planning than a national average.
Only after this analysis should you consider the technology you use. The specific question is if your scheduling software allows for different percentages of virtual visits for every specialty and clinician. Some medical practices evaluating white label telehealth platforms find that many tools cannot handle specific allocations for different specialties. It is useful to verify this capability during a product demonstration. You should also check how many appointments the software has managed in real environments. The Healee software has managed more than 5 million appointments for over 200 medical offices and more than 1 million patients.
If you are currently redesigning your schedule templates, you can request a demo to see how virtual visit settings work.
Frequently asked questions
What percentage of visits should occur via telehealth at my medical office?
There is no single number that is correct for every office – you should use percentages specific to each specialty – approximately 29.6% for mental health, 12% for endocrinology, 7.5% for primary care and 2.5% for urgent care. Then you must change those numbers based on the age of your patients and their internet access. A single goal for an entire office combines specialties that have very different requirements.
Why is the telehealth rate for urgent care only 2.5%?
The reason is that most virtual urgent care happens through businesses that are separate from traditional medical offices – those companies serve different patients and use clinicians who are licensed in many states. Within the schedules of regular clinics, urgent care visits happen almost entirely in person.
Is the use of telehealth still decreasing?
It is not decreasing – use peaked at nearly 21% of visits in April 2020 and fell during 2021 and 2022. It is now steady at approximately 7% of all visits.
Which medical specialty has the highest rate of telehealth?
Mental health has the highest rate – it reached 29.6% of visits in July 2026 – this rate is nearly four times higher than the 7.1% average for all medical specialties.
Should I plan telephone visits separately from video visits?
Yes. A telephone visit is a different type of service with its own medical rules and insurance codes. Data from CMS tracks the visits separately. If you do not plan for telephone visits specifically, your office will lack the necessary capacity for them.
Sources:
- Telehealth Trending data tracker – Epic Research, July 2026 data
- Medicare Telehealth Trends Snapshot – CMS, data through March 31, 2026
- Medicare Telehealth Trends dataset – CMS, 2026
- Patient Portal Use Associated With 21 Million Fewer Visit No-Shows in 2024 – Epic Research, 2025