Health Care Utilization With Telemedicine and In-Person Visits in Pediatric Primary Care.

Importance: Telemedicine is an increasingly used yet understudied vehicle to deliver pediatric primary care. Evidence detailing downstream health care utilization after telemedicine visits is needed.

Objective: To compare pediatric primary care conducted via telemedicine (video or telephone) with in-person office visits with regard to physician medication prescribing and imaging and laboratory ordering and downstream follow-up office visits, emergency department (ED) visits, and hospitalizations.

Design, setting, and participants: This cohort study included all patients younger than 18 years who had scheduled primary care appointments with a pediatrician from January 1 to December 31, 2022, in the Kaiser Permanente Northern California health system, a large integrated health care delivery system offering in-person office visits, video visits, or telephone visits for pediatric primary care.

Exposure: Pediatric primary care in-person visit, telephone visit, or video visit.

Main outcome and measures: Rates of physician medication prescribing and imaging and laboratory ordering during an index telemedicine or office visit and rates of in-person office visits, ED visits, and hospitalizations within 7 days after the visit, adjusted for patient and clinical characteristics.

Results: Of 782 596 total appointments (51.1% male) among 438 638 patients, telemedicine was used for 332 153 visits (42.4%). After adjustment, there was more medication prescribing for in-person visits (39.8%) compared with video visits (29.5%; adjusted difference, -10.3%; 95% CI, -10.6% to -10.0%) or telephone visits (27.3%; adjusted difference, -12.5%; 95% CI, -12.5% to -12.7%). There was also more laboratory ordering for in-person visits (24.6%) compared with video visits (7.8%; adjusted difference, -16.8%; 95% CI, -17.0% to -16.6%) or telephone visits (8.5%; adjusted difference, -16.2%; 95% CI, -16.3% to -16.0%). There was more imaging ordering for in-person visits (8.5%) compared with video visits (4.0%; adjusted difference, -4.5%; 95% CI, -4.6% to -4.4%) and telephone visits (3.5%; adjusted difference, -5.0%; 95% CI, -5.1% to -4.9%). After adjustment, fewer in-person follow up visits occurred for index visits that were in-person (4.3%) compared with video (14.4%; adjusted difference, 10.1%; 95% CI, 9.9%-10.3%) or telephone (15.1%; adjusted difference, 10.8%; 95% CI, 10.7%-11.0%) visits. The rate of ED visits following an in-person visit was slightly lower (1.75%) compared with after video visits (2.04%; adjusted difference, 0.29%; 95% CI, 0.21%-0.38%) or telephone visits (2.00%; adjusted difference, 0.25%; 95% CI, 0.18%-0.33%). There was no statistically significant difference in the 7-day rate of hospitalizations.

Conclusions and relevance: In this cohort study, telephone and video visits for pediatric primary care were associated with less prescribing and ordering than in-person visits. Telemedicine visits were associated with modestly higher rates of subsequent in-person visits and slightly higher rates of ED visits, and there was no difference in hospitalizations. Telemedicine appears to be a useful vehicle for health care delivery in the pediatric population, although it is not a universal substitute for in-person visits.