79.7% of physicians in hospital-owned practices used telehealth in 2024, compared with 68.4% of physicians in private practice, an 11.3-point gap, according to the American Medical Association's Physician Practice Benchmark Survey. Videoconferencing shows a wider split: 73.5% of hospital-owned physicians used it versus 58.3% of private-practice physicians, a 15.2-point difference.
The AMA drew these figures from its 2024 Physician Practice Benchmark Survey, a nationally representative poll of 5,000 physicians with a 43% response rate, fielded every two years since 2012. Independent practices use telehealth at a measurably slower pace than practices owned by hospitals or health systems, and the gap shows up across almost every telehealth format the AMA tracked.
The ownership split in telehealth use
Remote patient monitoring shows the same pattern at a smaller scale: 24.3% of hospital-owned physicians used it in 2024 versus 16.9% of private-practice physicians, a gap of roughly 7.4 points. Among primary care physicians specifically, 78.9% at hospital-owned practices used videoconferencing versus 70.1% in private practice, an 8.8-point gap.
| Telehealth format | Private practice | Hospital-owned practice |
|---|---|---|
| Any telehealth modality | 68.4% | 79.7% |
| Videoconferencing (all physicians) | 58.3% | 73.5% |
| Videoconferencing (primary care) | 70.1% | 78.9% |
| Remote patient monitoring | 16.9% | 24.3% |
Source: American Medical Association, Policy Research Perspectives, "Practice ownership linked to physicians' use of telehealth," Dec. 29, 2025, based on the 2024 Physician Practice Benchmark Survey.
The AMA also asked what telehealth visits were for. Across all physicians who used it, 52.5% used telehealth for chronic disease management, 48.5% for diagnosis or treatment, 40.3% for acute disease care, and 25% for preventive care. Those figures were not broken out by ownership type, but they show telehealth functioning as an extension of ongoing care management more than as a stand-in for a first visit.
Which specialties use it most
Across all specialties, only 15.7% of physicians used telehealth for more than 20% of their weekly visits in 2024, the AMA found using Benchmark Survey and Medicare claims data collected biennially since 2012. Psychiatry stands apart from every other specialty: 85.9% of psychiatrists used video visits weekly, and 68.2% used video or audio-only telehealth for more than 20% of their weekly visits.
No other specialty comes close. Neurology reached 32.2% of physicians using telehealth for more than a fifth of weekly visits, followed by endocrinology at 24.2%, gastroenterology at 20.4%, and family and general medicine at 20.1%. At the bottom, ophthalmology sat at 1.8% and dermatology at 3.7%, specialties where most care depends on an in-person exam.
Claim volume is still climbing nationally
Telehealth made up 5.51% of all medical claim lines in the first quarter of 2026, up from 5.01% in the fourth quarter of 2025, a 10.1% increase, according to FAIR Health's Quarterly Telehealth Regional Tracker. The share of patients with at least one telehealth claim rose to 18.4% in the first quarter of 2026 from 17.3% the prior quarter.
That national growth is not even across geography. FAIR Health found 18.6% of urban patients had a telehealth claim in the first quarter of 2026, compared with 10.3% of rural patients, an 8.3-point gap that runs opposite the access argument often made for rural telehealth expansion. Mental health conditions accounted for 52.1% of telehealth diagnostic claims in the quarter, and established-patient office visits made up 57.2% of telehealth procedure claims, with psychotherapy services at 35.0%.
Why some practices still don't use it
Among physicians who did not use videoconferencing or audio-only visits, 60.6% said the technology was not relevant to their specialty, the AMA found. Among physicians in specialties where telehealth was relevant but still unused, 60% cited a preference to see patients in person. Payment concerns followed: 25% pointed to insufficient reimbursement, 20.5% cited a lack of patient interest, and 13.4% pointed to the cost of implementation.
Those numbers connect to a wider ownership shift the same AMA survey tracked: only 42.2% of physicians were in private practice in 2024, down 18 percentage points from 60.2% in 2012. A practice that has already moved into a hospital system, or is weighing that move, has different capital available for telehealth platforms and remote monitoring equipment than a practice paying for that technology out of its own margin.
What the 2027 extension means for planning
Congress passed a two-year extension of Medicare telehealth flexibilities on Feb. 3, 2026, pushing the current rules through Dec. 31, 2027, according to the American Physical Therapy Association. The same funding package extended the Geographic Practice Cost Index floor, which raises Medicare payments in more than 50 rural payment localities, for one additional year.
For an independent practice deciding whether to add or expand telehealth, the extended deadline removes one source of short-term uncertainty, but it does not close the adoption gap on its own. A practice weighing where to start can look at its own specialty mix against the AMA's 2024 figures. In primary care, family medicine, and psychiatry, where usage already runs well above the physician-wide average, the data points toward telehealth as a standard offering rather than a pilot. In specialties near the bottom of the AMA's list, the case for a large telehealth investment is weaker unless a specific service line, such as post-procedure follow-up, calls for it.
Telehealth claim lines are still rising nationally, and mental health conditions account for more than half of telehealth diagnoses, so the highest-volume use case right now sits closer to behavioral health and chronic care follow-up than to acute or procedural specialties. A practice's specialty mix is a better guide to telehealth capacity planning than its size alone.
Sources
- American Medical Association, "Practice ownership linked to physicians' use of telehealth," Dec. 29, 2025
- American Medical Association, "New data details how telehealth use varies by physician specialty," Dec. 8, 2025
- American Medical Association, "Physician Practice Characteristics in 2024," Policy Research Perspectives, 2025
- FAIR Health, "Quarterly Telehealth Regional Tracker, January-March 2026"
- Fierce Healthcare, "US telehealth utilization climbs 10.1% in Q1, led by mental health visits: Fair Health," 2026
- American Physical Therapy Association, "Medicare Telehealth Flexibilities Extended Through Dec. 31, 2027," Feb. 4, 2026
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