Telemedicine use in neurology affected by race and neighborhood disparities

For individuals seeing a neurologist, their age, race, ethnicity and neighborhood might play a task in whether or not they achieve this in particular person or nearly, by way of telemedicine, in response to a examine revealed within the November 20, 2024, on-line subject of Neurology^® Scientific Observe , an official journal of the American Academy of Neurology. These outcomes don’t show these components enhance or lower an individual’s probability to decide on telemedicine, they solely present an affiliation.

There may be an pressing have to develop well being care choices that may meet the rising demand created by a scarcity of neurologists and a rising variety of people with neurological illness. Telemedicine has grow to be an integral a part of well being care supply and has the potential to enhance entry to care. This digital go to choice noticed a surge in utilization through the pandemic, which appeared to have initially improved entry throughout all teams. Nonetheless, our examine discovered that after the pandemic, disparities persevered.”

Marisa Patryce McGinley, DO, examine creator of Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and member of the American Academy of Neurology

For the examine, researchers evaluated information from 242,273 individuals. Telemedicine use was in contrast throughout three time frames: prepandemic, January 2019-February 2020; early pandemic, March-June 2020; and late pandemic, July 2020-July 2022, or after social distancing.

Researchers used residence addresses and a measure known as the Space Deprivation Index to find out if every participant lived in an advantaged or deprived neighborhood. The index incorporates info on the socioeconomic circumstances of every neighborhood and its residents, rating neighborhoods primarily based on 17 indicators together with earnings, employment, training and housing high quality. Larger scores on this index point out extra neighborhood drawback.

The contributors accomplished 752,174 visits through the examine, of which 201,045, or 27%, had been telemedicine visits and 551,129, or 73%, had been in particular person. Telemedicine use diversified by race and ethnicity with white individuals utilizing telemedicine as a substitute of in-person visits extra usually, 28% of the time, whereas Black individuals used telemedicine 22% of the time, and Hispanic individuals 24% of the time.

Of the overall telemedicine visits, 8,879 had been prepandemic, 39,624 had been through the early pandemic and 152,542 in late pandemic.

Researchers discovered that within the late pandemic time-frame, Black individuals had been 16% much less doubtless to make use of telemedicine than white individuals and Hispanic individuals had been 30% much less doubtless to make use of telemedicine than non-Hispanic individuals.

Throughout the identical time-frame, additionally they discovered that individuals who had been from a neighborhood with the next drawback had been much less doubtless to make use of telemedicine. These in essentially the most deprived neighborhoods had been 35% much less doubtless to make use of telemedicine than these within the least deprived neighborhoods.

“Equal utilization of telemedicine by individuals in rural and concrete areas on this examine suggests the potential of telemedicine to enhance entry disparities for rural sufferers,” McGinley mentioned. “Nonetheless, restricted entry to high-speed web, which is commonly tied to disparities, has additionally been proven to lower the probability of utilizing telemedicine. Future research are wanted to develop equitable well being care choices and decide the influence of telemedicine on enhancing entry to neurological care.”

A limitation of the examine was that just one well being system was studied, so it’s unknown whether or not comparable disparities exist at different establishments.

The examine was supported by the Nationwide Institutes of Well being and Genentech.