McMaster study finds that virtual care is safe, being used effectively

New research from McMaster University has found that virtual care is a safe way to hold medical appointments amid a rise in that type of assessment since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Shawn Mondoux, an emergency physician and associate professor at the university, led the study that was published in Healthcare Quarterly on Nov. 27.

It also confirmed that patients and physicians were able to use virtual care appropriately and effectively with minimal guidance.

Researchers used data from the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and the Ontario Health Insurance Plan to compare the safety of in-person assessments with virtual care, including video and phone appointments.

Patients were grouped based on several conditions, such as age, gender, similar historical illnesses and their history of diagnosis.

READ MORE: Ontario invests $30M in paediatric services at Hamilton, West Lincoln hospitals

This resulted in more than 18 million visits being included in the analysis, split evenly between virtual and in-person care.

Researchers then looked at patient outcomes at seven and 30 days following their appointment.

“The result was that when you look at the two populations together, those who were seen in virtual care had less bad outcomes, had less hospitalization, and less visits to intensive care units, and really had less health-care visits, with the exception of one place, which was they tended to see their own family doctors virtually more often than patients seen in-person,” Mondoux says.

The study noted that researchers couldn’t account for the acuity of the patients between the groups.

“So, if you’re super sick, you as a patient may in fact choose to say, ‘I’m really sick. This isn’t a virtual call thing. I’m going into the emergency department, or I’m going to go see my doctor, or I’m going to go see my specialist.’ And very reasonably, your family physician may also say the same thing. That acuity or that level of sickness isn’t something we could totally match for,” Mondoux says.

READ MORE: Respiratory-related ER visits surge at McMaster Children’s Hospital

In addition to the safety of virtual care, Mondoux says that patients and physicians are making good choices about the use of it.

“The in-person care system is probably taking care of much sicker patients, which is exactly what it should be doing. We released a technology that was brand new. And somehow, everybody just knew how to use it really well.”

Mondoux hopes the research can spur a conversation amongst policymakers about the use of virtual care, by turning the topic away from it being about whether it’s effective, and instead focus on who it is best suited for.

This study received funding from the Juravinski Research Institute and the Graham Farquharson Knowledge Translation Fellowship.

READ MORE: Hamilton nurses meet with local MPPs to discuss key issues in healthcare