Telemedicine visits requiring follow-up in-person visits at an urban academic family medicine centre

© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissionsoup.com..

BACKGROUND: With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, telemedicine was rapidly implemented in care settings globally. To understand what factors affect the successful completion of telemedicine visits in our urban, academic family medicine clinic setting, we analysed telemedicine visits carried out during the pandemic.

METHODS: We conducted a retrospective chart review of telemedicine visits from 2 clinical units within a family medicine centre. To investigate the association between incomplete visits and various factors (age, gender, presenting complaints, physician level of training [resident or staff] and patient-physician relational continuity), we performed a multivariable logistic regression on data from August 2020, February 2021, and May 2021. An incomplete visit is one that requires a follow-up in-person visit with a physician within 3 days.

RESULTS: Of the 2,138 telemedicine patient visits we investigated, 9.6% were incomplete. Patients presenting with lumps and bumps (OR: 3.84, 95% CI: 1.44, 10.5), as well as those seen by resident physicians (OR: 1.77, 95% CI: 1.22, 2.56) had increased odds of incomplete visits. Telemedicine visits at the family medicine clinic (Site A) with registered patients had lower odds of incomplete visits (OR: 0.24, 95% CI: 0.15, 0.39) than those at the community clinic (Site B), which provides urgent/episodic care with no associated relational continuity between patients and physicians.

CONCLUSION: In our urban clinical setting, only a small minority of telemedicine visits required an in-person follow-up visit. This information may be useful in guiding approaches to triaging patients to telemedicine or standard in-person care.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2024

Erschienen:

2024

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:41

Enthalten in:

Family practice - 41(2024), 2 vom: 15. Apr., Seite 105-113

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Arsenault, Mylène [VerfasserIn]
Long, Stephanie [VerfasserIn]
D'Souza, Vinita [VerfasserIn]
Ilie, Alexandru [VerfasserIn]
Todd, Keith J [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Continuity of patient care
Graduate medical education
Journal Article
Primary health care
Telehealth
Telemedicine
Virtual medicine

Anmerkungen:

Date Completed 16.04.2024

Date Revised 16.04.2024

published: Print

Citation Status MEDLINE

doi:

10.1093/fampra/cmae008

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM368720608