Telemedicine Expands Care Access for Spine Patients

When examining access to care for spine patients with low socioeconomic status, researchers found that visits conducted through telemedicine increased accessibility.  

The research, published in Global Spine Journal, includes data for 4,387 spine patients who had telemedicine visits and 3,810 spine patients who had in-person appointments. All telemedicine appointments took place between April 2020 and April 2021, and all in-person visits took place between January and December 2019.

Although telehealth has gained a reputation for being convenient, it is also known for being difficult to access for patients with low socioeconomic status.

To compare visitation channels for patients with spine issues, researchers considered the number of missed appointments.

Following an analysis, researchers found that patients missed 51.3 percent of in-person appointments, significantly higher than the 24.7 percent of telemedicine appointments that patients did not attend.

Researchers also noticed that patients with a higher area deprivation Index (ADI) were 59.5 percent likely to miss in-person appointments, which is higher than those with a medium and low ADI who missed 52.2 percent and 47.5 percent of appointments respectively.

ADI is a unit of measurement that compares the socioeconomic status of a region with health outcomes. In this study, researchers used patient addresses to determine the area in which they resided.

Researchers also noted that patients with lower socioeconomic status were 42 percent more likely to miss an in-person appointment compared to those with high socioeconomic status.

But the rate of missed telehealth appointments was similar across all levels of socioeconomic status.

Based on these results, researchers concluded that telemedicine was a helpful care delivery method for spine surgeons. Patients were significantly less likely to miss virtual appointments than in-person appointments, and telehealth use was consistent, regardless of socioeconomic status.

But researchers also noted certain study limitations, including that the in-person appointments and virtual appointments collected for the study took place in two different years and that the data did not indicate whether an appointment was a new visit, a follow-up, or a post-operative appointment.

Like spine operations, a study from October 2021 found that using telehealth for lung cancer screenings was just as effective as those done in person. This showed the potential for telehealth to increase the number of screenings and improve access to care.

Additionally, telehealth remains a popular method of care delivery across the country. An update from the FAIR Heath Monthly Regional Telehealth Tracker showed a sharp increase in telehealth use during the omicron surge of the COVID-19 pandemic. This increase occurred in all regions, and conditions related to mental health, acute respiratory disease, hypertension, and joint and soft tissue diseases were all widely treated virtually.