--- title: Why are mental health visits still around 40 percent virtual? | Nextvisit description: The rest of medicine gave telehealth back. Behavioral health did not, because the product is the conversation. The note still has to say where everyone was. url: "https://nextvisit.ai/blog/why-are-mental-health-visits-still-around-40-percent-virtual" type: static generatedAt: "2026-10-02T14:33:39.984Z" --- BH operations # Why are mental health visits still around 40 percent virtual? The rest of medicine gave telehealth back. Behavioral health did not, because the product is the conversation. The note still has to say where everyone was. BH operations / By Faisal Rafiq, MD / Published September 4, 2026 / 2 min read Mental health is still around 40 percent virtual. The rest of outpatient medicine is not. Christina Farr’s 2026 market note this week said the quiet part: the product is the conversation, so the modality stuck. Supply is still the constraint. That is not a reason to write an office note on a video visit. The percentage held. The auditors did not get nicer. ## Why this mix survived A psychiatrist can do a lot of the work through a rectangle: history, safety questions, meds, whether speech is pressured. Orthopedics cannot. When offices reopened, knees went back. Panic disorder did not, at least not all of it. Patients with kids, no car, or a job that allows a 20-minute lunch slot will keep choosing video. Clinicians who built a panel across state lines will keep choosing video until a legislature tells them to stop. The real gap is practices that still use a 2019 template and hope POS 10 magically appears. ## The note still has to be a telehealth note Where they were. Where you were. City and state. “Telehealth” is a modality, not a place. The field list is in [what belongs in a telehealth psychiatry note](/blog/what-belongs-in-a-telehealth-psychiatry-note). The 40 percent figure is why that post is not a pandemic leftover. Consent for this visit, this modality. A 2023 intake PDF is not “they agreed to video while their roommate walked through.” What you could not see. Gait, tremor, smell of alcohol, whether the kitchen is actually a parked car. If the exam is from the shoulders up, write that. A full canned MSE on a phone call is how you look like you were not there. Start and stop if you bill on time. Video does not fill 90833 for you. ## Access is not the same as capacity The other thing people said this week is that finding a psychiatrist is still a scavenger hunt: who treats ADHD, who takes new patients, who is virtual, who speaks Spanish. Telehealth did not create supply. It moved the waiting room into a browser. If you are the person they finally got, the note should show what you can do in 20 minutes on video and what you are sending back to an in-person clinic. Split treatment needs a named therapist, not “continue counseling.” If they took the call from a state you are not licensed in, that visit should not have finished. Write that you confirmed location before you started, or admit you didn’t and fix the process. ## Questions I get **Is 40 percent a CMS number?** It is an operator-and-payer ballpark from people who live in this market. Your clinic may be 10 percent or 90. The documentation job does not change with your mix. It changes visit by visit. **Can I default every visit to POS 10?** Only if they were at home. POS 02 if they were somewhere else. The note has to agree with the claim. This is boring and it is where denials start. **Does sticky telehealth mean I should stop offering office visits?** No. Some exams, some families, some first disclosures, and some boards still want a room. Offer both. Document which one you used. FR Faisal Rafiq, MD Author Published September 4, 2026 Reading time 2 min Filed under [BH operations](https://nextvisit.ai/blog#operations) [Back to all posts](/blog) See it on your workflow ## Twenty minutes, one mock visit. You leave with a note in your template. We run a mock session live, draft the note, and walk through what the downstream claim would look like. No slides. No sales deck. [Book a demo](https://nextvisit.cal.com/ryan/demo) [Talk to sales](mailto:hello@nextvisit.ai) Live in 2 weeks or less BAA signed by default