Telehealth is a substantial part of nurse practitioner practice, but reported use varies by workforce, geography, modality, and measurement. In California, 52% of practicing nurse practitioners provided video telehealth in their principal position in the CHCF California NP Workforce, 2024, while the NCSBN Telehealth Nursing Workforce, 2024, reported a 71.7% telehealth participation rate among nurse practitioners. These figures describe different populations and measures, so they should not be treated as competing national estimates.
Table of contents
- How often nurse practitioners use telehealth
- Video, voice-only, and multiple modalities
- California practice context
- National APRN workforce profile
- Virtual supervision and professional comparisons
- Patient use and broader telemedicine context
How often nurse practitioners use telehealth
The clearest nurse practitioner-specific participation figure in the supplied workforce measures comes from the NCSBN Telehealth Nursing Workforce, 2024. Nurse practitioners had a 71.7% telehealth participation rate. The same analysis reported a 47.2% virtual supervision participation rate for nurse practitioners. Telehealth participation and virtual supervision are separate measures: the first describes participation in telehealth, while the second describes participation in supervision delivered virtually.
The California picture is narrower but more detailed. The CHCF California NP Workforce, 2024, found that 52% of practicing nurse practitioners provided video telehealth in their principal position. Another 36% provided voice-only telehealth in that position, while 30.8% did not provide telehealth in their principal position. Because these categories come from a California principal-position measure, they should not be added together or used as a national total.
The same California source used a charted telehealth-type measure as well. In that measure, 51.5% of practicing nurse practitioners said they provided telehealth by video and 36.2% said they provided telehealth by voice only. The small differences from the principal-position figures illustrate why the question wording and measurement frame matter when comparing telehealth statistics.
For a broad workforce reference, the NCSBN APRN Workforce, 2024, reported telehealth use among APRNs at 65.2%. That population includes multiple advanced practice nursing professions, not only nurse practitioners. The analysis represented a sample frame of more than 500,000 APRNs, and 71.1% of the APRNs represented were certified nurse practitioners.
Video, voice-only, and multiple modalities
Video is the most prominent modality in the national APRN measure. The NCSBN APRN Workforce, 2024, reported that 63.1% of telehealth practice was delivered through video calls. It also found that 65.6% of APRNs used more than one telehealth modality. Together, those results point to a mixed delivery model rather than a video-only workforce.
California results show the same need to distinguish modality. In the CHCF California NP Workforce, 2024, 52% of practicing nurse practitioners provided video telehealth in their principal position and 36% provided voice-only telehealth. In the charted telehealth-type measure, the corresponding figures were 51.5% for video and 36.2% for voice only. The source reported 30.8% with no telehealth in the principal-position measure.
| Measure | Population and geography | Result | Source and period |
|---|---|---|---|
| Telehealth participation | Nurse practitioners, nursing workforce analysis | 71.7% | NCSBN Telehealth Nursing Workforce, 2024 |
| Telehealth use | APRNs | 65.2% | NCSBN APRN Workforce, 2024 |
| More than one modality | APRNs | 65.6% | NCSBN APRN Workforce, 2024 |
| Video share of telehealth practice | APRNs | 63.1% | NCSBN APRN Workforce, 2024 |
| Video in principal position | Practicing California NPs | 52% | CHCF California NP Workforce, 2024 |
| Voice only in principal position | Practicing California NPs | 36% | CHCF California NP Workforce, 2024 |
These are participation or modality measures, not measures of visit volume, clinical quality, or the percentage of every patient encounter delivered remotely.
California practice context
The CHCF California NP Workforce, 2024, provides context for interpreting the telehealth figures. Its California workforce sample included 875 nurse practitioners and 118 dual-licensed NP/nurse midwives, with 670 practicing as nurse practitioners. About 6 in 10 practicing nurse practitioners, or 62%, worked 40 hours or more per week, and the reported average was 38 working hours per week.
Practice setting and access are also relevant. Forty-eight percent of practicing California nurse practitioners reported providing any primary care, and 56% reported working in an underserved community in their principal position. One-third of nurse practitioners reported that one-third of their patients spoke a non-English language. These figures describe the practice environment in which telehealth may be used; they do not establish that telehealth caused any particular access result.
The California workforce reported several professional and employment characteristics. Eighty-one percent reported having one position, and 31% had been in their current position for six years or more. More than 8 in 10 received a master’s degree, while 16% completed a residency, training program, or fellowship beyond their advanced practice nursing program. Among those working 40 hours or more per week, 63% had annual earnings above $150,000.
Career satisfaction was generally positive in the same source: 40% reported being very satisfied and 37% satisfied with their career. Two percent reported being dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. The source also reported that 87% of practicing nurse practitioners were female and 13% male, while 11% were Latino/x compared with 40% of the California population identified as Latino/x in the source’s comparison.
National APRN workforce profile
The NCSBN APRN Workforce, 2024, describes the larger professional group behind the national telehealth estimate. Certified nurse practitioners accounted for 71.1% of APRNs in the analysis. Clinical nurse specialists accounted for 16.8%, certified registered nurse anesthetists for 9.1%, and certified nurse-midwives for 3.0%.
The analysis reported that 86.7% of APRNs were female, 92.5% were non-Hispanic, and 78.6% were White. It also found that 90.4% were actively employed in nursing and 79.1% reported direct patient care as their role. The average APRN had 24 years of experience and worked 40 hours per week on average.
These characteristics matter when applying the 65.2% APRN telehealth-use figure to nurse practitioner questions. The APRN estimate is broader than the NP profession, and its workforce composition differs from the California NP results. The data support using the figures as separate reference points, not combining them into one rate.
State-level mobility findings from the NCSBN APRN Compact survey, 2022, add another constraint on interpretation. In Wyoming, 45% of APRNs held active licenses in more than one state and 72% supported adoption of the APRN Compact. In Maryland, 92.57% of survey participants said they would support APRN Compact legislation. In Arizona, 65% of APRNs felt there was a need to provide care or educational services to people living or traveling outside the state, and 92.5% favored Arizona adopting the APRN Compact.
Those results are from a 2022 compact survey, not the 2024 telehealth workforce analyses. They indicate reported interest in interstate practice and services, but they do not quantify telehealth visits or establish that compact support leads to more virtual care.
Virtual supervision and professional comparisons
The NCSBN Telehealth Nursing Workforce, 2024, reported 47.2% virtual supervision participation among nurse practitioners. Across surveyed nursing health professions, total telehealth participation was 36.1% and virtual supervision participation was 25.2%. In the same analysis, registered nurse participants had a 10.4% telehealth participation rate, while licensed practical nurse/licensed vocational nurse/assistant participants had a 16.8% rate.
The report also included other health professions. Psychology participants had a 93.9% telehealth participation rate, social work participants 63.1%, and pharmacy participants 57.1%. These comparisons show that participation differed substantially by profession in the survey. They do not measure the quality, complexity, or clinical appropriateness of each profession’s virtual encounters.
The California source gives additional information about collaboration. Forty-five percent of nurse practitioners said a physician was on-site to discuss patient problems nearly always, defined in the source as 76% to 100% of the time. Seventeen percent said a physician was usually on-site, 15% sometimes, 15% seldom, and 14% never. The distribution describes reported on-site physician availability, not virtual supervision specifically.
Hospital privileges were also reported in the CHCF California NP Workforce, 2024, among nurse practitioners who wanted the relevant privilege. In that group, 80.4% held privileges to write orders without physician co-signature, 58.1% to round at a hospital, 60.8% to discharge patients, and 65.5% to admit patients. These are scope and workplace measures rather than telehealth-use measures, but they help distinguish professional authority from the method used to deliver care.
Patient use and broader telemedicine context
CMS Medicare Telehealth Trends Snapshot, 2025, reported a declining telehealth-user rate among telehealth-eligible users from 2020 through 2024. In 2020, 30,946,785 users were telehealth-eligible and 14,826,919 used telehealth, a 48% user rate. In 2021, 29,967,346 were eligible and 10,249,756 used telehealth, a 34% rate. In 2022, 28,885,208 were eligible and 8,503,157 used telehealth, a 29% rate.
The same CMS snapshot reported 27,896,098 telehealth-eligible users and 6,971,495 users in 2023, a 25% rate. In 2024, 27,361,263 were eligible and 6,749,825 used telehealth, also a 25% rate. These are Medicare population trends, not nurse practitioner participation rates, and the source does not support attributing the change to any single cause.
The CDC NCHS Data Brief 493, 2024, provides a physician comparison. It reported that 27.4% of medical specialists used telemedicine for at least 50% of patient visits. Regarding perceived care quality, 76.7% of primary care physicians said they could provide similar quality during telemedicine visits to some or a great extent. The corresponding figures were 73.1% for medical specialists and 50.6% for surgical specialists.
The CDC report also found that 49.7% of surgical specialists said telemedicine was not appropriate for their specialty or patients, compared with 26.7% of medical specialists and 15.5% of primary care physicians. These physician results are useful context for the broader delivery environment, but they should not be presented as nurse practitioner statistics.
Taken together, the available figures show a high reported level of telehealth participation among nurse practitioners and APRNs, frequent use of video and multiple modalities, and lower Medicare patient use in 2023 and 2024 than in 2020. The measures cover different populations, years, geographies, and questions, so each percentage is best read within its stated source and measurement period.