(HealthDay News) — In-person return visits are slightly higher after primary care telemedicine versus in-person visits, according to a study published online Oct. 17 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Mary Reed, DrPH, from the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland, CA, and colleagues compared treatment and follow-up visits between primary care video or telephone telemedicine and in-person office visits in a retrospective study based on administrative and electronic health record data between April and December 2021.
A total of 1,589,014 adult patients, with 2,357,598 primary care visits were included in the analyses. The researchers found that 50.8% of the primary care visits used telemedicine (19.5 and 31.3% video and telephone, respectively). Medications were prescribed in 46.8, 38.4 and 34.6% of office visits, video visits and telephone visits, respectively, after adjustment. After the visit, 1.3, 6.2 and 7.6% of in-person visits, video visits and telephone visits had a seven-day return in-person visit; 1.6, 1.8 and 2.1%, respectively, were followed by an emergency department visit. The largest differences in follow-up office visits after index office versus telephone visits were seen for acute pain conditions, and the smallest differences were seen for mental health.
“Overall, the rates of follow-up emergency department visit and hospitalizations were low, and differences between in-person visits and telemedicine visits were small,” the authors write.
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