75% Of Employers Will Offer Telehealth Services By Next Year

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

A survey from the National Business Group on Health found three of four employers plan to offer telehealth services to their employees next year.

A recent survey conducted by the National Business Group on Health asked 140 large U.S. businesses their thoughts on healthcare benefits. Forty-eight percent of respondents said they offered telehealth to their employees in 2014 and 74 percent expect to do so by 2016.

iHealth Beat reports that, of the companies that offered telehealth services:

• about 50 percent offered such services through their health plan
• 22 percent contracted directly with a vendor

The companies that offered telehealth services reported employee adoption rates of 12 percent.

Money is cited as the biggest motivator to move to other forms of healthcare. “The need to control rising health care benefits costs has never been greater,” said Brian Marcotte, president and CEO of the National Business Group on Health in a press release.

“Rising costs have plagued employers for many years, and now the looming excise tax is adding pressure. Employers only have two more years to bend the cost curve before the excise tax goes into effect in 2018. And while employers are pursuing several strategies to keep their plans under the excise tax threshold, they estimate their actions will only delay the impact by two to three years.”

“Telehealth can become an extension of primary care to free up physicians to focus on more complicated issues,” said Marcotte. “Employers need to do their due diligence, ask questions, and study the options closely.”