Healthcare Insights

Top 20 physician specialties with highest telemedicine insight scores

The sharp rise in telehealth utilization throughout the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that the technology can help patients reduce gaps in care and enable providers to improve their operational performance.

For companies offering telehealth and remote patient monitoring solutions, a provider’s level of engagement with telehealth technology can be a key component to segmenting the market. For healthcare software and IT companies more broadly, a provider’s telehealth usage – or lack thereof – could indicate a general appetite to adopt new technologies.

The future of telehealth is bright and holds great opportunities for patients, providers and care delivery organizations alike to expand adoption and improve experiences.

What components are used to determine a provider’s level of telehealth activity?

Clients who want to understand telehealth utilization can use ClaimsMx to see both diagnosis claims made during telehealth visits and the related procedure codes. Such data is used to size, segment and prioritize accounts.

To provide clients with an additional level of healthcare commercial intelligence, we’ve developed proprietary Telemedicine Insight Scores in PhysicianView.

Using a 5-star scale, a provider’s telemedicine capabilities are determined using the number of billed telehealth claims and the percentage of the total claims conducted via telehealth.

The Telemedicine Insight Score helps our clients gain a more granular understanding of a provider’s telehealth utilization so they can more accurately segment the market and target key provider prospects.

Below, we reviewed over 65,000 provider profiles with the highest Telemedicine Insight Scores (3, 4 or 5-stars) to identify the top primary specialties with the most providers utilizing telehealth.

Top 20 physician specialties with highest telemedicine insight scores

RankPrimary specialtyNumber of providersExplore dataset
1Social Worker - Licensed Clinical Social Worker13,408Explore
2Psychiatry10,670Explore
3Nurse - Nurse Practitioner8,613Explore
4Psychology - Client Psychologist7,859Explore
5Family Practice4,262Explore
6Internal Medicine3,531Explore
7Physician Assistant2,250Explore
8Pediatric Medicine1,999Explore
9Neurology1,101Explore
10Dietitian/Nutrition Professional791Explore
11Other767Explore
12Gastroenterology669Explore
13Endocrinology653Explore
14Obstetrics/Gynecology522Explore
15Therapy - Physical Therapist452Explore
16Emergency Medicine445Explore
17General Practice419Explore
18Nurse - Certified Clinical Nurse Specialist396Explore
19Nephrology357Explore
20Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation332Explore

Fig. 1 Data is from the Definitive Healthcare PhysicianView product. Telemedicine Insight Scores are proprietary and aggregated from commercial claims data from multiple medical claims clearinghouses in the United States. Data accurate as of October 2021.

Which provider specialties have the most telehealth capabilities?

Licensed clinical social workers, psychiatrists and clinical psychologists appear in the top four primary specialties with the highest Telemedicine Insight Scores. This corresponds with our data on anxiety, major depressive disorder and other behavioral health conditions as some of the top telehealth diagnoses. Nurse practitioners are also one of the top specialties with the highest Telemedicine Insight Score, potentially reflecting how primary care is being tackled with ongoing technology changes.

Healthcare Insights are developed with data from the Definitive Healthcare platform. Want even more insights? Start a free trial now and get access to the highest quality healthcare commercial intelligence on hospitals, physicians and other healthcare providers.