Telehealth Utilization and Follow-Up Visits in Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics During the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020.

OBJECTIVE

The goal of this study was to understand the effect of transition to telehealth care on follow-up visit attendance in a developmental-behavioral pediatric (DBP) practice in 2020 versus in-person care in 2019.

METHODS

This was a retrospective observational cohort study of follow-up visits occurring in a large DBP practice during a 6-week period in March/April of 2019 and 2020. The primary outcome was follow-up visit adherence, defined as completion of scheduled follow-up visit. The primary exposure was telehealth visit in 2020 versus in-person visit in 2019. Covariates included patient demographics and clinical characteristics. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and logistic regression.

RESULTS

The cohort included 2142 visits for 1868 unique patients. The patient mean age was 9.2 ± 4.8 years, with 73.4% male, 56.5% non-Hispanic, 51.4% White, and 68.3% commercial insurance. There were 470 telehealth visits from March to April 2020 and 1672 in-person visits from March to April 2019. Compared with in-person visits, telehealth visits were more likely to be completed (75.3% vs 64.4%, p < 0.001). After adjusting for age, sex, race, ethnicity, insurance, and week of visit (weeks 1-3 vs 4-6), odds of having a complete follow-up visit were higher for telehealth visits than for in-person visits (odds ratio = 1.57; 95% confidence interval [1.23-2.00], p < 0.001).

CONCLUSION

Follow-up visit attendance was higher for telehealth care in 2020 than in-person care in 2019. This association persisted after adjusting for insurance, age, race, and ethnicity, suggesting that telehealth is associated with increased follow-up visit attendance in DBP care. Further studies are needed to understand the impact of telehealth on DBP clinical outcomes in chronic disease management.