Clinical pediatrics
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Clinical pediatrics · Jan 2022
Are We Reaching Everyone? A Cross-Sectional Study of Telehealth Inequity in the COVID-19 Pandemic in an Urban Academic Pediatric Primary Care Clinic.
The COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic brought rapid expansion of pediatric telehealth to maintain patient access to care while decreasing COVID-19 community spread. We designed a retrospective, serial, cross-sectional study to investigate if telehealth implementation at an academic pediatric practice led to disparities in health care access. Significant differences were found in pre-COVID-19 versus during COVID-19 patient demographics. ⋯ Age was the only significant difference in patient demographics between in-person and telehealth visits during COVID-19. A multivariate regression showed older age as a significant positive predictor of having a video visit and public insurance as a significant negative predictor. Our study demonstrates telehealth disparities based on insurance existed at our clinic as did inequities in who was seen before versus during COVID-19.