Rural Telemedicine Use Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Repeated Cross-sectional Study

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a notable increase in telemedicine adoption. However, the impact of the pandemic on telemedicine use at a population level in rural and remote settings remains unclear. This study aimed to evaluate changes in the rate of telemedicine use among rural populations and i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Journal of medical Internet research 2021-04, Vol.23 (4), p.e26960-e26960
Main Authors:	Chu, Cherry, Cram, Peter, Pang, Andrea, Stamenova, Vess, Tadrous, Mina, Bhatia, R Sacha
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Age differences Age groups Ambulatory care Chronic illnesses Clinical outcomes Codes Coronaviruses COVID-19 Disease transmission Health care access Health services utilization Health status Medical referrals Multimedia Neighborhoods Older people Original Paper Pandemics Patients Personal health Population Remote areas Rural areas Rural communities Telemedicine Urban areas Video teleconferencing Visits
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Summary:	The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a notable increase in telemedicine adoption. However, the impact of the pandemic on telemedicine use at a population level in rural and remote settings remains unclear. This study aimed to evaluate changes in the rate of telemedicine use among rural populations and identify patient characteristics associated with telemedicine use prior to and during the pandemic. We conducted a repeated cross-sectional study on all monthly and quarterly rural telemedicine visits from January 2012 to June 2020, using administrative data from Ontario, Canada. We compared the changes in telemedicine use among residents of rural and urban regions of Ontario prior to and during the pandemic. Before the pandemic, telemedicine use was steadily low in 2012-2019 for both rural and urban populations but slightly higher overall for rural patients (11 visits per 1000 patients vs 7 visits per 1000 patients in December 2019, P
ISSN:	1438-8871 1439-4456 1438-8871