Nearly two-thirds (60 per cent) of U.S. employees currently use or have previously used virtual care as part of their health-care experience, according to a new report by Cigna Healthcare.
It found 70 per cent of U.S. adults were likely to use digital health tools in the future and roughly three-quarters believe the tools would help improve their well-being. Nearly half (45.7 per cent) reported using a combination of in-person and digital health resources to engage with their health-care providers, while 14.6 per cent reported using only in-person health-care resources and 6.5 per cent said they only use digital health-care resources.
According to the report, the most used digital health tools included virtual care appointments, mobile apps and wearable devices that monitor health. Generation Z and millennials were most likely to use mobile health apps, while virtual care was utilized fairly equally by adults of all ages.
Read: 34% of plan members used virtual health-care services in the last year: survey
In 2020, 23 million people in the U.S. were using remote patient monitoring devices; by 2025, that number is expected to almost triple to 70.6 million, representing roughly 26 per cent of the population. The mental-health app market was valued at $6.1 billion in 2023 and is estimated to increase 17.9 per cent by 2032, reaching $26 billion.
In addition, ability to access care anywhere became a more important driver of virtual care usage, with triple-digit growth in virtual primary care for the second consecutive year in 2023. Consumer usage of virtual behavioural health for longitudinal care increased by six per cent from 2022 to 2023 and consumer openness to using virtual care for behavioural health increased by 10 per cent.
Physicians’ use of technology for virtual visits doubled since 2016 and nearly 30 per cent of doctors reported using some form of virtual care. Additionally, 58 per cent of doctors said they enable their patients’ access to clinical data, 47 per cent used point-of-care or workflow enhancements and 37 per cent used clinical decision support tools in conjunction with electronic health records or apps to highlight potentially significant changes in patient data.
Notably, the report found 90 per cent of health-care spending in the U.S. goes toward treating diseases and their complications, while only two per cent to three per cent goes toward prevention.
Read: EAPs increasing virtual delivery, taking proactive approach to meet employees’ shifting needs