Longitudinal Use of Telehealth During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Utility of Asynchronous Testing for Subspecialty-Level Ophthalmic Care.

ABSTRACT:

Importance

Telehealth in ophthalmology has traditionally focused on preventive disease screening with limited use in outpatient evaluation. The unique conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic afforded the opportunity to evaluate different implementations of teleophthalmology at scale, providing insight into expanding teleophthalmology care.

Objective

To compare telehealth use in ophthalmology with other specialties and assess the feasibility of augmenting ophthalmic telehealth encounters with asynchronous testing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Design, setting, and participants

This quality improvement study evaluated retrospective, longitudinal, observational data from the first 18 months of the COVID-19 pandemic (January 1, 2020, through July 31, 2021) for 881 080 patients

SUBMITTER: Mosenia A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9716434 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature