THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
A more capable 24/7 Care treats more conditions and supports gaps in care closure
By Bryce Miller, General Manager, 24/7 Urgent Care and Primary360
For years, virtual urgent care served an important need for plan sponsors and members. By making care more accessible and convenient for the people they support, it has become a cornerstone of benefits packages for plan sponsors looking to reduce avoidable claims and overall healthcare spending.
Expectations for virtual urgent care have changed as the healthcare ecosystem evolved, and virtual urgent care capabilities have matured with it. Today, innovative virtual urgent care is more capable, better integrated and more connected than ever before.
We hear from our employer and health plan clients how difficult it is to get their employees and members to complete preventive care services. One study shows that nine in 10 adults have postponed recommended visits and screenings.
Despite health plans’ efforts to educate and engage members, an urgent care visit through 24/7 Care may be their only healthcare touchpoint in a year. A claims analysis of one client population showed 55% of members who had a Teladoc Health visit in 2025 had no other healthcare interaction or only visited settings like the emergency department or inpatient care where preventive needs aren’t addressed. For those members, their Teladoc Health visit was likely their only opportunity to address gaps in care.
One-off urgent care visits won’t address systemic healthcare challenges: the rising prevalence of chronic conditions, unsustainable costs, mounting pressures on care providers and more. Still, knowing the real-world situation of many members, it’s important for us to use the always-on access and convenience of 24/7 Care and turn it into a catalyst for better health.
There’s a ripple effect to not receiving preventive care. When evidence-based screenings or wellness visits are skipped, serious health risks go undetected.
Virtual urgent care can’t replace a longitudinal relationship with a primary care provider, but it does create a moment and a vital touchpoint. In this moment, licensed clinicians are positioned to go beyond urgent care. With the right data, care providers can help identify overdue screenings and rising risk indicators and route them to referrals or at-home kits to promote early detection and intervention.
Teladoc Health empowers our care teams with the data to spot missed screenings or other gaps in care and act. When clinically appropriate, care providers make recommendations and seamlessly connect patients to in-network providers or services to close the gap and improve population health outcomes.
A lot of people who aren’t regularly engaging in healthcare aren’t doing it by choice. The system has made it difficult. From long wait times to care coordination, patients have a lot to manage which can lead to costly, unnecessary visits and worse outcomes from delays in care.
Virtual urgent care is now capable of so much beyond the common conditions, such as the flu and ear infections, that it’s treated for years. Advancements now allow for the treatment of more complex health issues: back pain, urinary tract infections and acute complications with chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension and asthma. This reduces the need for patients to wait weeks or months for an in-person visit and helps them manage more complex conditions, quicker and more conveniently. Teladoc Health brings these values to life with provider-to-provider consultations that enable specialist expertise in 20-30 seconds, instead of weeks or months. Enhanced data
capabilities allow us to expand urgent care to include acute care that may require labs and a follow-up visit—providing in-the-moment support while patients wait to see a doctor and keeping them out the emergency department.
With recent enhancements to 24/7 Care, we’re pushing the urgent care model forward and doing things that haven’t been possible in traditional urgent care. Addressing gaps in care, enabling provider-to-provider specialist consults, and expanding to a broader range of treatable conditions are just a few examples of how virtual urgent care has evolved to improve health outcomes and deliver cost savings.
The pace of innovation is faster now than it has even been. Advancements in data and connectivity have expanded what virtual urgent care can do, and Teladoc Health is excited to bring them together in one place and meet many more member and patient needs in the process.
