Last updated: 2026-08-21
Honest Taskers, Carenet Healthcare, and RelateCare lead this year's shortlist of virtual telehealth nurse companies, seven firms ranked on how they answer a patient with a symptom out of hours, decide what level of care that symptom needs, escalate to a physician when nursing scope runs out, and document it well enough to stand up later. The nurse's license and the state your patient sits in decide most of this, so both come first in every entry.
Disclosure: Honest Taskers publishes this list and appears at position 1. We're judged on the same five published criteria as every other company here.
At a glance
- 1Honest Taskers
- 2Carenet Healthcare
- 3RelateCare
- 4Signallamp Health
- 5ChartSpan
- 6CareHarmony
- 7Wellbox
On this page
- How we chose the best virtual telehealth nurse companies
- Best virtual telehealth nurse companies compared
- The 7 companies
- Should you choose nurse triage, answering service, or AI?
- What are the risks of virtual telehealth nursing?
- How much does a virtual telehealth nurse cost?
- What should you look for in a telehealth nurse provider?
- How do you get started with a virtual telehealth nurse company?
- Methodology and sources
How we chose the best virtual telehealth nurse companies
Telehealth nursing is judged on one thing above all, which is whether the person on the call can safely decide what happens next. That's a licensed act, so we compared five things across every firm, which are who delivers the care and their stated credentials, licensure and where staff are based, what clinical scope the nurses work to, how escalation to a physician works, and the fee model. Escalation mattered more here than in the care-coordination titles, because a triage call that exceeds nursing scope needs somewhere to go that isn't the emergency department by default.
Licensure is the constraint people discover too late. A registered nurse doing telehealth generally needs a license in the state where the patient is, or a multistate license under the Nurse Licensure Compact. If you have patients in four states, that shapes your shortlist before price does. Signallamp Health is the only firm here that states the position plainly, saying its nurses are licensed in the same state as your patients, and it's the question to put to everyone else in writing.
Scope is the second thing to pin down, because this market uses "nurse" loosely. Some firms field licensed nurses who assess and advise. Others place staff with clinical backgrounds doing administrative work, which is genuinely useful but cannot triage. Virtual Nurse Rx, despite its name, states on its own site that it provides administrative support only and that clinical decisions remain with your licensed providers, which is the honest version of that distinction. The National Council of State Boards of Nursing is the reference for the compact, and CMS for how remote clinical time gets billed. Wage context for the in-house comparison is the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, which puts the national median for registered nurses at $46.90 an hour, about $97,550 a year.
Best virtual telehealth nurse companies compared
| Company | Who delivers the care | Licensure and location (as stated) | Fee model | Triage and escalation (as stated) | Records and compliance (as stated) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Honest Taskers | Remote staff, pool includes licensed nurses and physicians | Remote rather than in-house; PH, LatAm, India and Pakistan recruiting | $10.00 to $12.65/hr | Follows your written protocol; clinical decisions stay with your clinicians | Compliance verified by Accountable; BAA signed when handling PHI |
| Carenet Healthcare | Registered nurses plus physician e-consults | Not publicly listed | Not publicly listed | Nurse triage with physician escalation behind it; after-hours clinical support | Not publicly listed |
| RelateCare | Nurses delivering telephonic triage | Not publicly listed | Not publicly listed | 24/7 telephonic nurse triage; post-discharge follow-up | Not publicly listed |
| Signallamp Health | Its own employed home-based RNs and LPNs | States 100% US-based and licensed in the same state as your patients | $0 out of pocket, revenue share on CMS codes | Care management and monitoring rather than acute triage | Nurses work directly in your EHR; no BAA statement on the page |
| ChartSpan | Clinical staff, with a 24/7 nurse care line | Not publicly listed | Not publicly listed | 24/7 nurse care line for enrolled patients | Handles time tracking and documentation |
| CareHarmony | Nurses alongside engagement and data staff | Not publicly listed; HQ Brentwood, Tennessee | $0 upfront investment | Care coordination, post-discharge follow-up | CareBlocks platform; no HIPAA or BAA statement on the page |
| Wellbox | Nurses delivering monthly interactions | Not publicly listed | Not publicly listed | Risk identification between visits rather than acute triage | Not publicly listed |
1. Honest Taskers
Best for: practices that want remote staff with clinical backgrounds handling patient contact and the work around it, at a published rate.
Pricing: $10.00–$12.65/hrLocation: US clients; PH, LatAm, India and Pakistan recruitingModel: Remote, dedicatedFirst hire: Two-week working trial
Honest Taskers places remote healthcare-trained staff with US practices, and its pool includes licensed nurses and physicians, which is what makes it relevant to a clinically-minded brief rather than a purely administrative one. The role covers patient outreach and follow-up calls, symptom messages taken and routed to your clinicians per your written protocol, intake, scheduling, records, and the documentation around a telehealth program, worked in your hours and inside your systems. Staff train on HIPAA and data privacy under a dedicated compliance officer, a BAA is signed where they'll access PHI, and HIPAA compliance is verified by Accountable. Rates run $10.00 to $12.65 an hour, the first hire comes with a two-week working trial, and the company reports 99.6% average monthly retention. Our guide on how nurses become virtual assistants explains the clinical background its recruits bring to the work.
Limitation: staff work remotely rather than in-house, and licensure jurisdiction isn't published, so confirm state licensure for your patients' states if the role involves clinical assessment.
2. Carenet Healthcare
Best for: organizations that need nurse triage at volume with physicians available behind the nurses.
Pricing: Not publicly listedLocation: Not publicly listedModel: Nurses plus physician e-consultsTrial: Not publicly listed
Carenet is the closest thing here to a purpose-built telehealth triage operation, combining registered nurses with physician e-consults so a triaged call has an onward clinical route rather than a dead end. Its nurse triage and after-hours clinical support lines are the relevant products, and the design point is that a patient gets an assessment rather than a message taken by someone who cannot advise. Having physicians behind the nurses matters in practice, because the cases that exceed nursing scope are exactly the ones where defaulting to an emergency department is both expensive and often unnecessary. The company reports cutting costs by 67%, which is its own figure.
Limitation: neither pricing nor licensure jurisdictions are published, and it's built for scale rather than for a single small practice.
3. RelateCare
Best for: health systems wanting round-the-clock triage plus structured follow-up after discharge.
Pricing: Not publicly listedLocation: Not publicly listedModel: Nurse-delivered telephonic servicesTrial: Not publicly listed
RelateCare provides telephonic nurse triage with 24/7 access to healthcare advice, and pairs it with post-discharge follow-up and wellness programs. The pairing is the reason to shortlist it, since the highest-risk window for a patient is the fortnight after discharge and a nurse call in that period catches deterioration that would otherwise arrive as a readmission. Its own framing is about getting patients to the right level of care, which is the correct description of triage rather than message-taking, and the systematic approach it describes suits an organization that wants consistency across a large call volume.
Limitation: enterprise-oriented with nothing published on pricing or nurse licensure, so establish both before investing time.
4. Signallamp Health
Best for: practices that need nurses licensed in their patients' own states, working inside their EHR.
Pricing: $0 out of pocket, revenue shareLocation: 100% US-basedModel: Employed RNs and LPNsTrial: 4 to 6 week launch
Signallamp answers the licensure question better than anyone else here, stating that its nurses are 100% US-based and licensed in the same state as the patients they serve. It employs its own home-based RNs and LPNs rather than contracting them, and they work directly in your EHR without extra software. Its focus is care management between visits rather than acute triage, covering remote monitoring, medication reconciliation, care planning, and patient engagement, so it sits slightly outside the pure telehealth-triage brief while being the strongest option on licensure. Commercially it's $0 out of pocket on a revenue share against existing CMS codes, launching in four to six weeks, with company-reported figures of over 90% patient retention and a 63% reduction in emergency department utilization.
Limitation: built for ongoing care management rather than acute symptom triage, and no BAA statement appears on the page.
5. ChartSpan
Best for: practices that want enrolled patients to have a clinical line to call around the clock.
Pricing: Not publicly listedLocation: Not publicly listedModel: Clinical staff, whole functionTrial: Not publicly listed
ChartSpan runs chronic care management exclusively, and the feature that puts it on this list is its 24/7 nurse care line, which gives enrolled patients somewhere clinical to call at any hour. Its clinical staff also handle monthly outreach, time tracking, and documentation for the practice, and it runs enrollment, which is where most chronic care programs stall. The company reports patient savings of $2,457 a year and 20% fewer hospitalisations, both its own figures. For a practice whose telehealth need is continuity of contact for a defined patient group rather than open triage, this shape fits well.
Limitation: its pages block full automated access, so staff credentials, licensure, and the fee model were left unverified rather than guessed at.
6. CareHarmony
Best for: groups wanting coordination designed with them, including post-discharge calls.
Pricing: $0 upfront investmentLocation: HQ Brentwood, TennesseeModel: Nurses plus platformTrial: Not publicly listed
CareHarmony pairs nurses with population health experts, data scientists, and engagement specialists, working through its CareBlocks platform, and describes a consultative relationship in which program design happens with the practice rather than being handed over. Patient accounts on its site describe medication access help, post-discharge follow-up calls, and general health management support, which is a reasonable picture of what its nurses do day to day. It requires $0 upfront investment, states that over 100,000 people rely on it, and claims the platform lets a team manage up to ten times the population a standard model can.
Limitation: no staff credentials, no licensure detail, and no HIPAA or BAA statement on the page, which is a gap worth closing before any PHI moves.
7. Wellbox
Best for: practices wanting scheduled monthly nurse contact rather than on-demand triage.
Pricing: Not publicly listedLocation: Not publicly listedModel: Nurse-delivered care managementTrial: Not publicly listed
Wellbox delivers chronic care management through monthly nurse interactions that catch risk before it becomes an admission, alongside patient engagement, health monitoring, and preventative care coordination. It publishes more outcome detail than anyone else here, reporting that participants' per-beneficiary-per-month Medicare costs fell 10 to 15%, preventative care measures rose 50% in partner practices, emergency room visits and hospitalisations fell 60%, and patient satisfaction runs 90 to 96%. All of those are the company's own numbers, and the volume of specifics is at least useful material to test in a sales conversation.
Limitation: scheduled monthly contact rather than around-the-clock triage, and no credentials, pricing, or BAA statement on the page.
Should you choose nurse triage, answering service, or AI?
These three sit at sharply different price points and only one of them can give a patient clinical advice. A telehealth nurse can assess a symptom, advise, and decide whether someone needs to be seen tonight. That capability is the entire reason to pay nurse rates, and no cheaper option substitutes for it.
An answering service costs a fraction as much, answers with a person, takes a message, and routes urgent calls to your on-call clinician per a protocol you write. It's the right purchase when the problem is unanswered phones. It becomes the wrong purchase the moment you expect the operator to judge urgency, because they must not, and the good vendors say so.
AI triage tools now sit between the two, asking structured questions and directing patients to a level of care. They're cheap, tireless, and improving, and they're a reasonable front door for clearly routine questions. What they cannot do is hear that a patient is frightened, notice that a vague description doesn't add up, or take responsibility for the decision. If your reason for buying is clinical risk, that responsibility is what you're purchasing, and it needs a license attached to it.
What are the risks of virtual telehealth nursing?
- A nurse licensed in the wrong state. Licensure generally has to match the patient's location, or be a compact multistate license. Get the states in writing.
- No physician escalation route, so anything beyond nursing scope defaults to the emergency department.
- Unlicensed staff advising patients. Ask directly whether the person on the call holds a license.
- No BAA in place, which several providers here don't mention at all.
- Triage documentation that wouldn't withstand review months later.
- Protocols nobody rehearsed. Test a mock call before go-live.
- Company-reported outcome figures accepted as evidence. Every number in this category is the vendor's own.
- Continuity, since a patient with a long-term condition does better with the same nurse.
How much does a virtual telehealth nurse cost?
Almost nobody in this category publishes a rate. Honest Taskers publishes $10.00 to $12.65 an hour for remote staff. Signallamp Health charges $0 out of pocket and takes a share of collections through existing CMS codes, and CareHarmony also requires $0 upfront. Carenet, RelateCare, ChartSpan, and Wellbox all quote on request.
The three shapes carry different risk. Hourly is predictable and you own the outcome. A revenue share means no cost if nothing is billed, but it needs enough eligible patients to interest the provider, and their incentive is enrollment volume. Per-call or per-member pricing, which is how the large triage operations tend to work, scales with demand and is the hardest to forecast in a first year. Whichever shape you're offered, ask what happens at low volume and who owns the patient relationship if the contract ends. All figures here are dated readings, so confirm before signing.
What should you look for in a telehealth nurse provider?
- Licensure states for every nurse who might take your calls, plus whether they hold a compact license.
- How licensure is verified, and how often.
- A documented physician escalation path for cases beyond nursing scope.
- A written scope of practice covering what the nurse will and won't do.
- Whether nurses are employed or contracted, since employment tends to mean better continuity.
- Whether they work in your EHR or a separate system you'll reconcile later.
- A signed BAA, which several providers here never mention.
- Triage documentation you could defend in a review.
How do you get started with a virtual telehealth nurse company?
- Decide whether you need clinical judgement or message-taking, because that single answer sets the budget.
- List the states your patients are in, since that filters the shortlist before price does.
- Write the escalation protocol, including what reaches a physician and how fast.
- Shortlist two or three providers and request licensure states and a BAA in writing.
- Ask to see anonymised triage documentation.
- Run a mock call end to end before go-live.
- Start with one after-hours window or one patient group rather than everything at once.
- Review at 90 days on call volume, escalation accuracy, and avoidable emergency visits.
Methodology and sources
We verified each company at its own website on August 21, 2026, recording who delivers the care and their stated credentials, licensure and location, the fee model, clinical scope and escalation, and stated compliance posture. Licensure and compact rules come from the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, and billing rules from CMS. Every outcome figure quoted here is company-reported and labeled as such, because none of these firms publishes independently audited results. Rates are volatile and were captured as dated points rather than quotes, so re-check before you buy. Facts a company didn't publish are marked "not publicly listed". ChartSpan's pages block full automated access, so only its chronic care management page is used. Nurse job boards and recruitment networks were excluded because they connect nurses to employers rather than selling a service to a practice.
Related clinical support guides
If triage specifically is what you need, our telephone triage medical assistant page sets out where triage sits and who is qualified to perform it.
If the work is monitoring rather than triage, our remote patient monitoring assistant page covers device data, onboarding, and follow-up between visits.