COVID-19 Made Mental Health Appointments Virtual, Many Patients Want It To Stay That Way A year ago, trying to get patients at Michigan Medicine to agree to telehealth for their mental health appointments was a challenge. The academic medical centre associated with the University of Michigan had only 26 video appointments in a six month period compared with 30 thousand in person visits. COVID-19 changed all that. “Like for many health institutions, virtual care failed to gain traction at the Michigan Medicine Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic pre-pandemic. In the first three weeks of the Michigan Stay-at-Home Order to minimize the spread of the COVID-19 virus, we saw a rapid uptake in virtual care when patients were asked to change their in-person appointments,” Dr. Jennifer Severe, a psychiatrist who assisted in the launch of a test of telehealth initiatives in the U-M's outpatient psychiatry clinic told Theravive.