It took a pandemic for Americans to use this health-care innovation

‘You hear people in the telehealth industry talking about what they’ve been working on for 10-plus years. In a matter of weeks they had more accomplishments than over that entire decade.’

Telehealth has long been heralded as a game-changer that can improve care and potentially lower health-care costs. Yet few patients and doctors had any interest in using it until March, when COVID-19 lockdowns forced large swaths of the population to stay home and fear of contracting the coronavirus largely kept people away from hospitals and physicians’ offices.