Care Delivery in Community Health Centers Before, During, and After the COVID-19 Pandemic (2019-2022).

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

Health centers provide primary and behavioral health care to the nation's safety net population. Many health centers served on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought major changes to health center care delivery.

Objective

To elucidate primary care and behavioral health service delivery patterns in health centers before and during the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE).

Methods

We compared annual and monthly patients from 2019 to 2022 for new and established patients by visit type (primary care, behavioral health) and encounter visits by modality (in-person, telehealth) across 218 health centers in 13 states.

Results

There were 1581,744 unique patients in the sample, most from health disparate populations. Review of primary care

SUBMITTER: Cook N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10843627 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature