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Telemedicine supports the successful delivery of follow-up IBD care and interdisciplinary care for newly diagnosed patients.
The 2024 Crohn’s & Colitis Congress featured multiple sessions on management strategies for patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), emphasizing a multidisciplinary approach to optimize IBD care. Abstracts presented at the conference explored the use of telehealth to achieve this goal.
Telehealth Supports Follow-Up Care at a Tertiary IBD Center
Lead author Jeffrey Olson, MD, and coinvestigators reported that telehealth supported patient retention and multidisciplinary follow-up care at a tertiary IBD center.1
“Telehealth care in the ambulatory setting has dramatically increased in the COVID and post-COVID period in medicine. Understanding how this may impact the care of patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is important,” Dr. Olson wrote.
The study included patients who received care from January 2018 to March 2020 and August 2020 to January 2023. Due to precautions that included mandatory telehealth, researchers excluded March 2020 through August 2020.
The clinic requires all new patients to be seen in person. However, patients with follow-up visits after August 2020 could be seen in person or virtually according to preference.
The study included 7,040 patients. Patients were predominantly White (89%), and more than half were female (56%). Stratified by health insurance type, 76% had commercial insurance, 17% had Medicare, 4% had Medicaid, and 3% were uninsured.
Overall, patients who had at least one year of follow-up were more likely to be seen as a return visit after the COVID pandemic when compared with the prepandemic period (84% vs 76%, P<0.05).
In the post-COVID period, 62% of patients (3,575 out of 5,750) opted for telehealth for their follow-up IBD care.
Patients who used telehealth had significantly longer drive times to the clinic compared with those who only had in-person appointments (median 56.3 minutes [IQR 93.3] vs median 47.9 minutes [IQR 89.7]; P<0.001). Additionally, patients who received only in-person care in the post-COVID period had significantly shorter drive times compared with those who attended the clinic before the pandemic (38.8 minutes [IQR 60] vs 54.2 minutes [IQR 89.9]; P<0.001).
“Telehealth is an effective strategy for continued multidisciplinary care at a tertiary care IBD center. Patients who live farther away are more likely to continue IBD care via telehealth,” Dr. Olson and coauthors concluded.
Interdisciplinary Care Access for Newly Diagnosed Patients
In another abstract presented at the conference, a team of investigators evaluated the use of telemedicine to deliver interdisciplinary care for patients who were newly diagnosed with IBD.2
“Interdisciplinary care is increasingly being recognized as important in the care of [patients with IBD]. However, access to additional resources to do this are frequently only available in tertiary-care IBD centers,” wrote lead author Ayanna Lewis, MD, and coauthors.
The pilot study involved 12 patients from the Mount Sinai Health System who were diagnosed with IBD in the 18 months before the study. Patients were enrolled in the Comprehensive Care for Recently Diagnosed IBD Patient (COMPASS-IBD) program, which provided interdisciplinary care to patients with new diagnoses.
“Patients have access to a physician who works at the IBD Center, a nutritionist specializing in IBD diets, an experienced IBD clinical pharmacist, and a licensed clinical social worker dedicated to the mental and social needs of patients with IBD,” Dr. Lewis noted.
All patients attended telehealth for all appointments, and researchers provided recommendations electronically to the patient and their gastroenterologist. Patients reported overall satisfaction with the use of telemedicine, and researchers found there were no major barriers to implementing virtual care.
“We believe our pilot study shows a simple way for health systems to increase access to interdisciplinary IBD care for patients with limited access to tertiary-care IBD centers,” Dr. Lewis and coauthors concluded. “This approach may also help in achieving health equity for underserved IBD patient populations.”
