In a study led by Lauren Eberty, MD, a Clinical Fellow in Cardiovascular Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania https://www.med.upenn.edu, researchers examined data for nearly 150,000 patients.
Patients who had visits previously scheduled such as primary care or ambulatory specialty visits between March and May 2020, showed that a little more than half, roughly 81,000 (54%) conducted their visits via telemedicine. Within that segment, less than half nearly 36,000 (46% ) had visits conducted via video.
A study led by researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and published in JAMA Network Open https://jamanetwork.com, uncovered that significant inequities existed in telemedicine visits, particularly by race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, for those that did not speak English.
The study showed that more than half of the patients experienced clear inequities. Overall, patients who were older than 55 were 25% less likely that the average patient to successfully participate in a telemedicine visit and people older than 75 were 33% less likely.
People who identified as Asian were 31 percent less likely to conduct a telemedicine visit and those who did not speak English were also 16 percent less likely to use telemedicine. It was found that using Medicaid also made patients less likely by 7% to successfully conduct a telemedicine visit.
It was also found that disparities existed in video-based telemedicine visits. This is likely because they didn’t have problems accessing telemedicine if it was by phone or audio-based since video was not accessible to them.
It tuned out that women were 8% less likely to participate in a video visit than men. Latino patients were 10 percent less likely than White patients, and Black people 35% less than White people. Patients with lower household incomes were also less likely to conduct a video visit, and with those making less than $50,000, 43% less likely to use video technology.
Srinath Adusumalli, MD, Assistant Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and the University of Pennsylvania Health System’s Assistant Chief Medical Information Officer for Connected Health said, “We hope that regulatory and payer organizations recognize potential inequities that could be introduced by policies which might not include reimbursing for telephone visits, which could potentially lead to lack of access to care for particular patient populations, specifically patients disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 crisis.”
Dr. Adusumalli reports that since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak based on the results of the study, one-click interpreter integration was added for more than 40 video-based languages and greater than 100 audio-based languages for both inpatient and outpatient telemedical care.
Dr. Eberty explained, “We currently have broader research underway to better characterize what patient-specific barriers exist. If we can understand these barriers, it could help guide telemedicine implementation strategies that will benefit everyone.”