The increased adoption of telemedicine during the COVID-19 pandemic raised the rate of completed primary care visits for Black patients by 10 percent, according to a study published May 2 in Telemedicine and e-Health.
Researchers from the Philadelphia-based Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania compared appointment completion rates for Black patients with those for non-Black patients in 2020 as compared with those in 2019 using data from Penn Medicine's EHR system.
The findings showed that completed primary care visits rose from about 70 percent among Black patients before the arrival of COVID-19 to over 80 percent in 2020. This means, the equity gap of at least 10 percent disappeared at Penn Medicine practices after telemedicine was widely adopted.
"The specific time periods where we saw significant gains made by Black patients came when telemedicine was well-established in our health system," said Krisda Chaiyachati, MD, senior author of the study and assistant professor of medicine at Penn Medicine. "This does not appear to be a coincidence."
Data also showed that Black patients were more inclined to use telemedicine for primary care visits than non-Black patients. Roughly 33 percent of Black patients' 2020 appointments were completed via telemedicine, with 25 percent occurring via telemedicine for non-Black patients.
"As the healthcare sector — policymakers, payers, providers and patients — continue to develop the role telemedicine may play in healthcare's future, understanding how it can be a mechanism for improving equity is an important dimension to consider," said Dr. Chaiyachati.
Even once in-office appointments returned, the inequities in primary care visits stayed erased, indicating that telemedicine has potential to be a long-term tool for equity, according to the study.