Endocrinologists offer telehealth more often than psychiatrists

We went looking for doctors whose practice address is a telehealth-only office. There are almost none. Of 703,381 MD and DO doctors in the CMS Doctors and Clinicians file, 35 have an address line with "virtual", "telehealth", "telemed" or "online" in it. Across all 1,627,468 clinicians in the file the count is 82.

Telehealth itself is common. The file has a telehealth flag on each clinician, and 176,407 of the 703,381 doctors carry it, which is 25.1%. We expected psychiatry to lead, and it came eighth.

By specialty

Source: ProfessionLens, November 2026.

Most of the top ten are specialties that follow the same patients for years, such as diabetes and thyroid care, cancer treatment and arthritis. Psychiatry has the most flagged doctors in absolute terms, 13,332, but half of all psychiatrists in the file do not carry the flag.

At the bottom are the doctors whose work needs the patient or the scan in the room.

Source: ProfessionLens, November 2026.

Radiologists often read images remotely, yet 1.8% carry the flag, so the flag seems to track patient visits rather than remote work in general.

By state

Massachusetts has the highest share: 7,963 of 22,166 doctors with a practice address there, or 35.9%. Then come the District of Columbia (33.6%), California (31.9%), Maryland (31.4%) and New Hampshire (31.3%). The lowest shares are in South Dakota (14.0%), Iowa (13.4%), Alabama (12.6%) and Mississippi (12.0%). Puerto Rico is at 4.0%.

Other clinicians

Clinical psychologists carry the flag most often of any credential with at least 5,000 clinicians, 47.3% of 9,817. Clinical social workers are at 36.8%, nurse practitioners at 26.0% and physician assistants at 19.4%. Physical therapists are at 1.4% and chiropractors at 0.2%.

How we counted

The CMS Doctors and Clinicians National Downloadable File has one row per clinician and practice address for clinicians enrolled in Medicare. We used the copy fetched on 15 September 2026: 3,388,628 rows and 1,627,468 distinct NPIs. A clinician counts once, by NPI, and offers telehealth when the file's telehealth field is Y. Doctors are NPIs with credential MD or DO; 322,737 clinicians have a blank credential and are not counted as doctors, so the doctor totals are a floor. Specialty is the primary specialty. A doctor with practice addresses in two states counts in both states. Doctors who do not take Medicare are not in the file. The tables, per state rows and the script output are in the dataset linked below.