Midway through 2024, the bottom fell out of telehealth in the United States — or so it felt like to casual observers of the industry. Within a single week, both Walmart and UnitedHealth’s Optum were reported to shut down their virtual care services, closely following the surprise departure of Teladoc’s longtime CEO in April. Telehealth, the rising star of online-first health care set in motion by the necessity of the pandemic, seemed to be in free fall.
It’s true that the utilization of telehealth has fallen from the heights seen during the pandemic. But despite the challenges facing telehealth businesses — many of which are shared by health care startups in every sector — clinicians and patients continue to advocate for its use and lobby to preserve the flexibility and access it enables. Even as some large businesses retreat, telehealth usage remains higher than it was before the pandemic pushed visits onto screens.
The first Trump administration experienced but a taste of the cultural shift toward digital health care. Now it will have to deal with the fallout of the last four years of whiplash in virtual care — from multiple rounds of policy exceptions and extensions to the financial turmoil created by a boom in investment followed by a funding drought that may or may not be coming to an end.
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