A telehealth pattern is emerging nearly four years after the Covid-19 pandemic supercharged virtual health care.

Analysis from the research arm of Epic Systems, a health care software company, found that while virtual visits have declined since the initial peak early in the pandemic, usage levels remain well above pre-pandemic numbers.

How so? Using Epic’s electronic records system, the researchers analyzed more than 475 million visits between the second quarter of 2019 and the third quarter of 2023. More than 35 percent of hospitals use the company’s system.

The researchers found that while virtual visits have declined as Covid fears have abated, there’s still demand for telehealth, especially for minor illnesses, routine prescription refills, chronic conditions and, most of all, mental health care.

Mental health care most recently accounted for 36.8 percent of telehealth visits.

By contrast, telehealth visits overall made up only 5.8 percent of total health care visits during the same period.

Why it matters: Before the pandemic, telehealth comprised a low proportion of visits across all specialties, averaging around 0.2 percent of visits.

Telehealth peaked in the second quarter of 2020, at 31.2 percent of visits, as pandemic restrictions necessitated the use of alternative care delivery options and the Trump administration and Congress eased Medicare rules to facilitate its use.

What’s next? Congress has extended the Medicare rules through 2024.

Lawmakers have also proposed several bipartisan measures to extend and broaden access to virtual care.

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Researchers have found a way to use an enzyme that breaks down leaves to dissolve plastic, triggering hope that it could be used on a large scale to boost recycling, the BBC reports.

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Today on our Pulse Check podcast, host Lauren Gardner talks with Carmen, who explains why U.S. health experts say the surge in respiratory infections in China is neither a sign of another pandemic nor cause for concern.

Doctors who work in group practices aren’t obsessing about AI, according to a new poll from a group representing them.

The Medical Group Management Association surveyed 423 group leaders and found they have more immediate concerns.

How so? Asked to list their top tech priorities, a plurality of 35 percent said fine-tuning their electronic health records systems was No. 1.

That computes, the association said in reporting the poll results, given the systems’ potential for reducing doctors’ workloads.

The respondents said they aimed to improve how their records systems communicate with those of other health organizations, including other practices, health systems and insurers.

Coming in at No. 2 with 26 percent was improving patient communications.

The association chalked that up to a post-pandemic need to get back in touch with long-absent patients combined with a shortage of staff to do so.

Electronic systems that reduce “the manual work of handling phone calls, portal messages, scheduling, check-in, checkout and the cadence of outreach for appointment reminders” are in high demand, it said

In third place, 21 percent of the respondents said they wanted to upgrade their revenue and billing systems.

The association attributed that, too, to doctors’ desire to automate work done by staff.

AI was next, at 13 percent, likely because the tech is still nascent for most practices. The association cited polling that only 1 in 10 practice groups use AI tools regularly.

Leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee think Congress might need to set national data privacy standards to account for the data health care artificial intelligence tools vacuum up.

The Republican chairs of the full committee and the health panel, Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington and Brett Guthrie of Kentucky, respectively, said in a statement that they want to ensure “the data that feeds AI is not collected, used, or shared without one’s consent when it may be personally identifiable” and that existing laws sometimes don’t provide enough protection.

What else? Rodgers and Guthrie also said they want to ensure AI in medicine improves patient care and government policy drives innovation toward that end.

AI shouldn’t be used to replace doctors, supplant their judgment or “indiscriminately limit access to care,” they said.

State of play: AI is gaining a foothold in medicine.

Last month, the FDA added 171 medical devices to its list of devices that use AI or machine learning, for a total of nearly 700, and in 2021, drugmakers submitted approval applications for more than 100 drugs and biologics with AI and machine-learning elements, according to the E&C Committee.

Lawmakers discussed the technology’s use in medicine during a hearing of the E&C Health Subcommittee earlier today, at which ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) said he supported a national data privacy standard.