Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Ontario saw a 5600% increase in virtual visits to health care practitioners, while in-office visits decreased by 79% from the previous year. In 2018, only 4% of family physicians in Canada were offering video visits while, at the peak of the pandemic, about 80% of primary care visits were being delivered virtually in Ontario.

Media reports at the time suggested patients were substituting emergency department (ED) visits when in-person consultations were unavailable, leading to additional strain on already stretched ED resources.

A research paper published in CMAJ looked at whether this shift in care was in fact taking place. Dr. Hemant Shah is an internal medicine physician and hepatologist at Toronto General Hospital and co-author of the study entitled Association between virtual primary care and emergency department use during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario, Canada.

On today’s episode, Dr. Shah discusses the study’s surprising findings with hosts Dr. Blair Bigham and Dr. Mojola Omole.

Drs Omole and Bigham then speak with Toni Leamon, the CMA’s patient voice chair, a member of CMA's Virtual Care Taskforce and a co-author of the CMA's Virtual Care Companion for Patients. She offers the patient’s vision of high quality virtual care.

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The CMAJ Podcast is produced by PodCraft Productions

Virtual versus in-person consultation: getting the mix right

CMAJ Podcasts

Virtual versus in-person consultation: getting the mix right