Each month, millions of people visit Zocdoc.com or use our free mobile app to find quality healthcare providers. Every click tells us something new about patient preferences, highlighting that each search and booking reflects a unique need, priority, and desire.
As we track year-over-year trends in our second annual What Patients Want Report, it’s clear patient preferences are evolving. In 2024, patients showed their preference for in-person visits (with the exception of mental health) and reaffirmed their preference for providers in their local area.
Read on for an overview of the year’s key trends and insights (and how they compared to 2023) and download the full report here.
Virtual vs. In-person
Virtual visits made up 12% of all appointments booked in 2024 (slightly down from 18% in 2023), a number heavily skewed by mental health bookings, which are primarily virtual.
Excluding mental health, only 5% of bookings on Zocdoc were for virtual visits (down from 8% in 2023).
Patients strongly preferred in-person care for nearly all specialties, with the exception of mental health.
Compared to 2023, patients booked more virtual visits for mental health in 2024. Urgent care patients also booked slightly more virtual visits (26% in 2024 vs. 21% in 2023). In-person visits increased this year slightly for primary care doctors, neurologists, and pediatricians.
Patients prefer to stay close to home
Almost 4 in 5 physical appointments were within 20 miles. Roughly half of all virtual appointments took place within 20 miles of the patient, too – indicating patients preference for provider proximity even when scheduling virtual care. This was consistent with 2023.
For in-person appointments, proximity was even more important for more “hands-on” specialties such as physical therapists and sports medicine specialists.
As such, proximity of mental health providers mattered much less than other specialties, given the nature of those interactions.
The importance of a hybrid approach
Patients know that healthcare is inherently physical, and they value establishing a virtual relationship with a provider that can continue in person, and vice versa. With the exception of mental health, providers who offered both virtual and in-person visits received 48% more bookings than those that offered in-person only and 224% more than virtual-only providers.
Outside of mental health, when booking a first visit virtually, nearly 1 in 5 patients (17%) booked an in-person follow-up. However, this online-offline continuity of care differed by specialty.
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