A new research health report from Statistics Canada has found that higher education, not having a regular health care provider and multimorbidity were all positively associated with greater virtual care use. “Technological barriers were not a common reason for declining virtual appointments,” the researchers note.
Entitled Virtual care use in Canada: Variation across sociodemographic and health-related factors, the report notes that 2023 data shows 57.5 per cent of patients made use of in-person appointments only, just 5.3 per cent said they’d attended virtual appointments only, and 37.2 per cent of Canadians had both types of appointments in the 12-month period being studied.
Higher use than pre-pandemic levels
Peaking in April 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when 61 per cent of COVID-related health care visits were virtual and 54 per cent of other health care visits were virtual, virtual care decreased after the pandemic lockdowns but remains higher than pre-pandemic levels. (In 2019, between two and 11 per cent of patient services were virtual, depending on the province. Virtual care is defined as any form of interaction between patients and health care providers which occurs remotely via technologies, including telephone, video conferencing, text messaging and emailing.)
“The main objective of this study is to provide recent information on virtual care use in Canada and whether it varies by sociodemographic and health-related characteristics,” they write.
“There were no statistically significant differences in the type of appointment by immigrant status, sexual orientation, financial well-being or main work activity. However, compared with patients aged 15 to 24, those aged 75 and older were less likely to have had both in-person and virtual appointments. Women were more likely than men to have had both types of appointments.”
Chronic conditions
They also note that university degree holders were more likely to have had virtual appointments only. Rural patients were less likely than their urban counterparts to have had virtual appointments only and patients with no regular health care providers were more likely to have had virtual appointments only. “Patients with one or more chronic conditions were more likely to have had a virtual appointment than their counterparts with no chronic conditions,” they note.
Among those who’d had a virtual appointment during the study period, 62.1 per cent met with a family doctor, general practitioner or nurse practitioner, while 10.2 per cent report meeting with a specialist this way. Of those who were offered virtual care but declined (8.9 per cent), 47.9 per cent were more comfortable with in-person visits while 40.3 per cent felt their health issue required an in-person appointment. Only 9.1 per cent cited not being comfortable with the technology.
“Many patients had access to virtual care and a willingness to use it,” the report concludes. “Few individuals declined virtual care; among those who did, greater comfort with in-person appointments was the most common reason.”
