Industry experts estimate that by 2018, 80 percent of employerswill be offering a telehealth benefit to theiremployees.

To uncover what's behind this growth, and to gain anunderstanding of employer involvement with and perceptions oftelehealth, American Well, creator of the Amwell telehealth app,conducted a broad survey of this sector in Q4 2015.

We invited companies of all sizes, from small organizations withfewer than 1,000 employees to large companies with over 20,000employees. We heard from companies across a variety of industries,from banking to biotech to health care to manufacturing to retailand more.

Our benchmark survey gathered 241 responses from Human Resourcesbenefits managers, brokers, and other individuals responsible forpurchasing employer benefits. Here we share key insights.

Employer telehealth is on the rise

Our findings confirm that telehealth is on the rise in theemployer market.

One-third of employers already offer telehealth. In fact, forthe largest organizations surveyed (organizations with more than5,000 employees), that number is even higher—39 percent.

These numbers represent a significant increase from 2014, whenonly 22 percent of employers offered telehealth.

We anticipate this momentum will continue, as 49 percent ofemployers who had not yet deployed telehealth reported plans to addthis benefit in 2016.

We identified five key reasons employers are increasinglyembracing telehealth. They see telehealth as a tool to help withthe following:

1. Reduce medical costs

2. Improve access to care

3. Make employees happy

4. Improve employee productivity

5. Attract new talent

Among employers that were unsure when they would add telehealth,the overall theme was a need for education regarding the benefitsof telehealth and potential ROI.

We anticipate that our survey will help fill in these knowledgegaps and provide employers in the awareness and considerationphases with the information they need to make an adoptiondecision.

Employers have a broad vision for telehealth usecases

We surveyed employers both about the services they currentlyoffer through telehealth and about the services they want to offerin the future—and the responses in both cases went far beyondurgent care.

Employers have expansive vision when it comes to telehealth.

After urgent care, the top five use cases for both current andfuture services are general health assessments, behavioral health,diet and nutrition services, diabetes counseling, and smokingcessation.

Many employers also expressed interest in more specializedservices, some of which are occupational health, asthma counseling,and lactation support.

Employers seek support in utilization andreporting

Employers who operate telehealth programs today come up againsttwo main challenges: maximizing utilization and getting adequatereporting.

Half of employers surveyed reported utilization of 10 percent orless. An experienced telehealth service can help employers improveutilization through proven practices such as timely, themed emailcampaigns, enrollment incentives, coupons to try the service forfree, and quarterly communications across a variety ofchannels.

Employers who follow these best practices can expect engagementabove and beyond 10 percent.

On a related note, our survey also showed that there is areporting gap—over a third of employers didn't even haveutilization data for their telehealth service.

A telehealth service vendor or health plan can assist here,providing at least monthly reports detailing not only utilizationbut other key metrics such as diagnoses, visit times of day, andmore.

Market impact

Although there is still much to learn about the impact of atelehealth benefit for both employers and employees, our surveyuncovered information that is not only valuable to employers, butthat also impacts health plans, private exchanges, and healthsystems.

The message across all markets is that there is a demand forthis service, and organizations that do not yet offer the benefitor have plans to do so risk becoming laggards.

Urgent care will not be enough to satisfy employers—they arelooking for a robust telehealth offering that supports theirwellness programs and specialized use cases.

Read more about how employers think about telehealth inour eBook, TelehealthIndex 2016: Employer Benchmark Survey.

Claudia Rimerman is the Vice President of Channel Relationshipsat American Well.