Amwell says telehealth usage dipped amid milder flu season

Amwell says telehealth usage dipped amid milder flu season unknown Amwell says telehealth usage dipped amid milder flu season  HealthLeaders Media

Amwell saw telehealth usage dip in 2023 amid a milder flu season than was seen during the previous year.

The hybrid care delivery enablement platform saw 1.6 million visits in the fourth quarter, down from 1.7 million during the same quarter in 2022, according to Amwell’s fourth quarter and full-year earnings releases for 2023 and 2022, respectively.

The total visits for the full year were down, too. Amwell reported 6.3 million visits in 2023, down from 6.5 million in 2022, per the releases.

“Last year’s early and severe flu season did not repeat this year,” Amwell Chief Financial Officer Robert Shepardson said Wednesday (Feb. 14) when addressing the fourth quarter’s decline in visits during the company’s quarterly earnings call.

Shepardson also said during the call that scheduled visits made up a larger share of the total visits in the fourth quarter.

“Scheduled visits represented 60% of total, continuing to highlight the evolution of our company from provision of virtual urgent care to a platform provider enabling hybrid care,” he said.

In terms of providers, the Amwell platform had 103,000 total active providers in the fourth quarter, down from 107,000 during the same quarter in 2022, according to the earnings releases.

The company plans to sunset this metric beginning in the first quarter, Shepardson said during the call. The “active providers” metric was introduced to indicate healthy and sustained activity on the platform in the post-COVID world, he said.

After rising from 8,000 active providers in late 2019 to almost 100,000 by the end of 2021, the number has remained steady, at about 100,000, Shepardson said.

“We are finding that many of our clients are aiming to improve outcomes less by adding providers but rather by increasing the number of patients each provider can care for by using our platform capabilities, including our automated care programs,” Shepardson said.

Among those using the platform, Amwell reported high satisfaction.

“Our NPS [net promoter score] is at all-time high; the NPS of both patients/members and providers is in the high 90s,” Ido Schoenberg, MD, chairman and CEO of Amwell, said during the earnings call. “It’s very, very high.”