To say that 2020 has been a clunker is, well, the understatement of the year. Collectively speaking, most people around the world are more than happy to see the year overshadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic in their rearview mirror. For that reason, perhaps no new year in recent history has been as longingly anticipated as is 2021.

If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that patient access to virtual healthcare is no longer a “nice to have” innovation for the future but rather a paramount necessity of the present. The worldwide outbreak of the coronavirus in March 2020 demanded that virtual health technologies like telehealth be repositioned at the forefront. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the number of telehealth visits during the first quarter of 2020 increased by 50 percent compared with the same period in 2019. Similarly, during a single week in March 2020, the CDC reported a 154 percent increase in telehealth visits.

https://www.healthitoutcomes.com/doc/looking-to-why-we-need-to-focus-on-virtual-care-0001