While 2016 saw an increaseof 46 percent in outpatient days with telemedicinevisits than the year prior, telemedicine still represents lessthan one percent of total outpatient visits. (Photo:Shutterstock)

Telemedicine has been touted as a breakthrough in health care access, giving patients who, forone reason or another, can't see a doctor in person, access viavideo conferencing or remote monitoring. And while a new survey by the Kaiser Family Foundationshows more employers are paying for such services, another report suggest that enrollment has beenrelatively low.

The 2018 Employer Health Benefit Survey finds that employerscovering telemedicine has jumped from 27 percent in 2015to 74 percent in 2018. Large employers, those with 5,000 workers ormore, are most likely to cover telemedicine (83 percent) whilesmaller firms, those with 50 to 199 workers are least likely (65percent).

Related: 8 things to know about telehealth thisyear

However, among people with at least six months of large employercoverage and at least one outpatient claim, the share of enrolleeshas remained small. In 2016, 0.41 percent of rural enrollees withat least six months of coverage and at least one outpatient claimused telemedicine, compared to 0.52 percent of urban enrollees (upfrom 0.23 percent and 0.36 percent, respectively, the yearprior).

In total among people with large employer coverage, the studyfinds there were nearly 429,000 outpatient days that included atelemedicine visit in 2016. While this represents an increase of 46percent from the 293,000 outpatient days with telemedicine visitsthe year prior, telemedicine still represents less than one percentof total outpatient visits and does not appear to be significantlyreplacing traditional in-person physician visits. Among people withat least 6 months of large employer coverage and at least oneoutpatient claim in 2016, just 0.51 percent of enrollees had atelemedicine outpatient visit, up from 0.35 percent of enrollees in2015.

The study analyzed a sample of medical claims obtained from theTruven Health Analytics MarketScan Commercial Claims and EncountersDatabase, which is a database with claims information provided bylarge employers.