Virtual care use before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: a repeated cross-sectional study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is thought to have increased use of virtual care, but population-based studies are lacking. We aimed to assess the uptake of virtual care during the COVID-19 pandemic using comprehensive population-based data from Ontario.

Methods

This was a repeated cross-sectional study design. We used administrative data to evaluate changes in in-person and virtual visits among all residents of Ontario before (2012-2019) and during (January-August 2020) the COVID-19 pandemic. We included all patients who had an ambulatory care visit in Ontario. We excluded claims for patients who were not Ontario residents or had an invalid or missing health card number. We compared monthly or quarterly virtual care use across age groups, neighbo

SUBMITTER: Bhatia RS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8034297 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan-Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature