Telehealth Ecosystem 2021
Understanding the Rapidly Evolving Landscape

Virtual care platform vendors as a whole report the broadest capability sets, with integration a commonly reported area of strength. Early market entrants Amwell and Teladoc Health report high levels of adoption across their customer bases. Amwell, heavily used for scheduled and on-demand visits, reports broad capabilities for front-end technology and communication; adoption of delivery capabilities is shallower. Amwell also reports broad integration capabilities, though in previous research, customers have noted integration struggles. Teladoc Health reports customers most often adopt capabilities for telespecialty consults, and a majority also do scheduled and on-demand visits. Teladoc’s offering stands out for its front-end technology, particularly the hardware. Initially focused on emergent transport, swyMed reports a broad offering with varied use cases for their still-growing customer base. Best in KLAS winner Caregility reports deep adoption for scheduled and on-demand visits as well as telespecialty consultations. Their capability set is more limited than those of more long-standing vendors, especially regarding care delivery and workflows, where Caregility supplements with several third-party partnerships.

Remote patient monitoring (RPM) vendors report a broader number of capabilities than expected, having added video visit and other capabilities. Multi-year Best in KLAS winner Health Recovery Solutions reports workflows that allow them to be used for a wide variety of patient conditions/needs, and they report high customer adoption of their video visit capabilities. Philips, whose telehealth capabilities extend beyond RPM, offers capabilities for specific inpatient conditions/needs. Some workflow capabilities are supported through third-party partnerships. Stated adoption is strong for video visits, in addition to RPM capabilities. Vivify Health is a long-standing player in RPM with significant market presence, but they declined to share self-reported capabilities and adoption; information on their clients’ satisfaction can be found in the Telehealth Overview chart.

A Note about Teladoc Health:
Teladoc Health, which merged with Livongo in 2020, has capabilities in chronic disease management that complement telehealth efforts such as remotely monitoring patients with diabetes or other conditions. Their primary customers are employers.

Often used behind the scenes with workflows layered on from EMRs or workflow-specific solutions, video conferencing platforms focus on and typically excel at the technical capabilities that enable visits. Doxy.me stands out among these platforms for use across all telehealth scenarios for many patient conditions/needs, and they report integration with most EMR vendors, though in previous research, customers have noted integration struggles. Doxy.me also leads among video conferencing platforms for the number of dedicated administrative workflows in their product (though still modest compared to virtual care platforms and lacking clinical workflows). Microsoft Teams is used most often for scheduled visits and telespecialty consults. It can be quickly purchased and deployed, meaning organizations have the flexibility to use the solution for virtual care across several patient conditions and needs. The solution can be used in a standalone fashion or as the back end for workflow solutions (e.g., EMRs) and integrated with additional systems. Teams is able to connect with user devices, though some gaps exist around tracking/diagnostic devices used to deliver clinical care. Doximity, who has a background providing a medical network for healthcare professionals, focuses solely on scheduled and on-demand visits and is used for various patient conditions/needs; they report fewer dedicated workflows and front-end connectivity capabilities.

EMR-centric vendors are among the most likely to focus on scheduled and on-demand virtual visits. These vendors’ telehealth solutions typically have strong integration, though it often centers around the vendor’s own EMR architecture. Epic stands out for high self-reported customer adoption across a broad variety of patient conditions and for robust workflows. Epic also reports that adoption of telehealth use cases has deepened since KLAS’ 2020 telehealth performance report. NextGen Healthcare’s solution (acquired from OTTO Health in late 2019) focuses on ambulatory practices, which are typically doing scheduled and on-demand virtual visits. The solution supports multiple specialties and complements existing EMR and PM workflows. Due to OTTO Health’s vendor-agnostic history, NextGen Healthcare reports live EMR integrations with athenahealth and Greenway Health (through Greenway’s marketplace) in addition to their own EMR. They are limited today in terms of tracking/diagnostic devices but report many of these on their development road map. Cerner offers several telehealth offerings, including self-developed as well as partner solutions (i.e., Amwell and Raziel Health) to address a variety of telehealth scenarios. Allscripts, athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, Greenway Health, and MEDITECH all quickly released telehealth capabilities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. KLAS is in the early stages of measuring the customer experience and plans to release a future report specifically on EMR-centric telehealth solutions. (See the Telehealth Overview chart for more details on the reported capabilities of EMR-centric vendors.)