Patients grow more open with their health data during pandemic

What's happening: A new survey released by Deloitte this week examined health care consumers attitudes toward virtual medicine, both before and during the pandemic.

• Deloitte found that consumers using virtual doctors visits rose from 15% in 2019 to 28% in April 2020, mirroring a massive increase in the use of telemedicine during the early months of the pandemic lockdown.

Details: The most notable result was consumers' increased willingness to share their health data — a reversal of the skepticism that had been growing before the pandemic.

• 71% of consumers said they would share personal heath data with a health insurer, up from 65% before the pandemic.

"There's an increasing awareness among consumers that if they share data, they can get more value and more insights from it."

The bottom line: If virtual health care shows that it can directly benefit health care consumers — as it largely has during the pandemic — data privacy worries may recede.