WEDNESDAY, Dec. 27, 2023 (HealthDay News) — Virtual care with an outside physician is associated with more emergency department visits, compared with virtual visits with a regular care physician, according to a study published online Dec. 27 in JAMA Network Open.
Lauren Lapointe-Shaw, M.D., Ph.D., from University Health Network in Toronto, and colleagues investigated whether there was a difference in subsequent emergency department use between patients who had a virtual visit with their own family physician versus those who had virtual visits with an outside physician. The analysis included 5.2 million individuals with a family physician and virtual visit (April 1, 2021, to March 31, 2022).
The researchers found that when propensity score matching those with a personal versus outside physician, those who saw an outside physician were 66 percent more likely to visit an emergency department within seven days of the virtual visit versus those who virtually saw their own physician (3.3 versus 2.0 percent; risk difference, 1.3 percent; relative risk, 1.66). The risk was even greater for patients with definite direct-to-consumer telemedicine visits versus patients with own physician visits (risk difference, 4.1 percent; relative risk, 2.99).
“These findings suggest that primary care virtual visits may be best used within an existing clinical relationship,” the authors write.
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