Telehealth Reduced Racial Disparities in Primary Care Access in 2020

A Penn Medicine study found that the number of primary care visits was similar between Black and non-Black patients in 2020, suggesting that virtual care can help eliminate racial disparities.

Telehealth use skyrocketed in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This new research, published in Penn Medicine News, sought to uncover the impact that the implementation of telehealth had on primary care utilization and how it varied by race.

Researchers conducted a retrospective cohort study that used EHR data from 2020. With data on 1.9 million appointments, researchers found that racial differences in appointment completion rates narrowed significantly in 2020.

Though the percentage point difference in appointment completion rates between Black and non-Black patients was significantly higher during the shutdown at 11.7, it dropped to 8.2 during the reopening period between June and September. It fell further to 7.1 percentage points between October and December.

In terms of percentages, completed primary care visits spiked from 60 percent before the pandemic to over 80 percent in 2020 among Black patients. The rate of completed primary care visits among non-Black patients was about 70 percent pre-pandemic and then jumped to over 80 percent.

This showed that telehealth is a preferred and easily accessible channel of healthcare for Black patients.

“We looked through the entire year of 2020, not just the first half of the year when telemedicine was the only option for many people, and the appointment completion gap between Black and non-Black patients closed,” said Krisda Chaiyachati, MD, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor of medicine at Penn Medicine, in a press release.

Researchers concluded that there were fewer racial disparities in primary care access in 2020 compared to previous years, and they believe telehealth was the main reason for this.

“Offering telemedicine, even though it was for a crisis, appears to have been a significant step forward toward addressing long-standing inequities in healthcare access,” said Chaiyachati.

Further, researchers believe that telemedicine can continue to limit barriers associated with care access.

Over the past year, several organizations have used telehealth to close care gaps based on race and increase access.

In August 2021, federally qualified health centers in Massachusetts made efforts to eliminate racial health disparities through a project known as the Telehealth Consortium. The consortium was based on a partnership between the accountable care organization Community Care Cooperative and the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers. The Consortium intended to address the digital divide and fundraise for sustained telehealth access.

In September 2021, the Jackson State University College of Health Sciences launched a Digital Telehealth Hub (DTH) to address racial health disparities. The DTH aimed to uncover and overcome the challenges that racial minorities face when accessing healthcare resources.

The hub efforts are focused on collaborative research to gain insight into telehealth, establishing partnerships to further education regarding social challenges, and employing solutions to access issues within communities.