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. 2022 Apr 25;17(4):e0267218. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0267218

Virtual care use during the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on healthcare utilization in patients with chronic disease: A population-based repeated cross-sectional study

Vess Stamenova 1,*, Cherry Chu 1, Andrea Pang 2, Jiming Fang 2, Ahmad Shakeri 1, Peter Cram 2,3, Onil Bhattacharyya 1,4, R Sacha Bhatia 1,2, Mina Tadrous 1,5
Editor: Juan F Orueta6
PMCID: PMC9037937  PMID: 35468168

Abstract

Purpose

It is currently unclear how the shift towards virtual care during the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic may have impacted chronic disease management at a population level. The goals of our study were to provide a description of the levels of use of virtual care services relative to in-person care in patients with chronic disease across Ontario, Canada and to describe levels of healthcare utilization in low versus high virtual care users.

Methods

We used linked health administrative data to conduct a population-based, repeated cross-sectional study of all ambulatory patient visits in Ontario, Canada (January 1, 2018 to January 16, 2021). Further stratifications were also completed to examine patients with COPD, heart failure, asthma, hypertension, diabetes, mental illness, and angina. Patients were classified as low (max 1 virtual care visit) vs. high virtual care users. A time-series analysis was done using interventional autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) modelling on weekly hospitalizations, outpatient visits, and diagnostic tests.

Results

The use of virtual care increased across all chronic disease patient populations. Virtual care constituted at least half of the total care in all conditions. Both low and high virtual care user groups experienced a statistically significant reduction in hospitalizations and laboratory testing at the start of the pandemic. Hospitalization volumes increased again only among the high users, while testing increased in both groups. Outpatient visits among high users remained unaffected by the pandemic but dropped in low users.

Conclusion

The decrease of in-person care during the pandemic was accompanied by an increase in virtual care, which ultimately allowed patients with chronic disease to return to the same visit rate as they had before the onset of the pandemic. Virtual care was adopted across various chronic conditions, but the relative adoption of virtual care varied by condition with highest rates seen in mental health.

Introduction

The 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has forced healthcare systems to balance the risk of COVID infection with the potential negative impacts of delaying care [1, 2]. This has led to a significant adoption of virtual care services globally as a means to continue seeing patients while minimizing the cost of contact [3–5]. In Ontario, Canada, in the first 3 months of the pandemic 70% of all ambulatory visits were conducted virtually (telephone or video) [3, 6] and 86% of physicians conducted at least one virtual care visit [3].

With unprecedented levels of virtual care use, policy makers and payors are concerned about the quality of care being delivered virtually and potential increases in costs due to higher healthcare utilization. The COVID-19 pandemic has also led to challenges in the care of patients with chronic disease [7, 8]. A study from the USA reported a 90% reduction in rates of screening and prevention services [7]. Similarly, in Ontario, Canada, a study reported 89% fewer preventative primary care visits [9]. Additionally, reports of hospitalizations across various jurisdictions have demonstrated that there was a general decline in hospitalizations across many chronic conditions, especially early in the pandemic [10–12]. Such reductions in in-person visits and hospitalizations may lead to higher rates of future healthcare utilization during later stages of the pandemic (e.g. hospitalizations, emergency department visits).

It is currently unclear how the shift towards virtual care during the pandemic may have impacted chronic disease management and if virtual care was able to compensate for pandemic-related drops in in-person visits. The extent at which virtual care adoption was maintained throughout later stages of the pandemic is also still unknown. In Ontario, the most populated province in Canada, the healthcare system is publicly funded and the data we used covers all healthcare services used [13]. It, therefore, presents an opportunity to examine shifts in care at a population-level.

The goals of our study were to provide a description of the levels of use of virtual care services, relative to in-person care in patients with chronic disease across Ontario, Canada and to describe levels of healthcare utilization in low versus high virtual care users.

Methods

This study received an ethics exemption provided by the Research Ethics Board of Women’s College Hospital (REB # 2020-0106-E). This study will be conducted at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES), which is a prescribed entity under section 45 of Ontario’s Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA). The study will use only data that is already de-identified and will be conducted under ICES’ stringent privacy regulations. It has been determined that studies/projects that fall under Section 451 of the Personal Health Information Protection Act: Disclosure for planning and management of health system do not require REB review and approval.

Study design

We used linked health administrative data to conduct a population-based, repeated cross-sectional study of all ambulatory patient visits in Ontario, Canada beginning January 1, 2018 and extending to the 2nd week of January, 2021. We identified visits weekly in the total Ontario population, and for subpopulations of patients with chronic disease.

Data sources

We used the following administrative databases: the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) for physician claims, the Canadian Institutes of Health Information Discharge Abstract Database (CIHI-DAD) for information about all hospitalizations, the CIHI National Ambulatory Care Reporting System (NACRS) for hospital- and community-based ambulatory care including ED visits, the Ontario Drug Benefit Database (ODB) for prescription medication data for those ≥65 years old, the ICES Physician Database (IPDB) for data on physician specialty, the Ontario Mental Health Reporting Systems (OMHRS) for psychiatric hospitalizations and the Ontario Laboratories Information System (OLIS) for community- and hospital-based laboratories. Databases were linked using unique identifiers and analyzed at ICES (the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences). Together these databases cover all of healthcare activity in Ontario. Use of these databases for the purposes of this study was authorized under §45 of Ontario’s Personal Health Information Protection Act, which does not require review by a research ethics board (REB). Nonetheless, the study also received an REB exemption approval from Women’s College Hospital REB (REB # 2020-0106-E). All data was de-identified at ICES and individual patient consent was waived.

Population

For each week of our study period (Jan 1, 2018- Jan 16, 2021), we identified all ambulatory care visits (in-person and virtual care visits) over the study period using relevant provider billing codes (see S1 File for full list of billing codes). We excluded claims for any patient who was a non-Ontario resident and/or had an invalid or missing health card number.

Further stratifications were also completed for circumscribed patient populations: COPD, heart failure, asthma, hypertension, and diabetes if they had at least one entry in the corresponding disease-specific registry at ICES [13] any time prior to their index visit (their first visit during the observation window). Patients with mental illness were identified by at least one outpatient claim with a primary care provider visit linked to psychiatric diagnostic codes, or a mental health service code or any code by a psychiatrist in the past 3 years. Angina patients were identified by at least one ED visit with the relevant ICD-9 or 10 code in the past 12 months (see S1 File for details on diagnostic codes used in the definitions).

Analysis

For each week of our study period (Jan 1, 2018- Jan 16, 2021) we examined the number and rate per 1000 of in-person and virtual care visits across all age groups and the percentage of ambulatory visits that were virtual (versus in-person) for all patients eligible for healthcare services in Ontario.

To examine differences in healthcare utilization between patients who use virtual care and those who do not, we classified patients into two groups based on their use of virtual care. Low virtual care users had at least one visit (virtual or in-person) after the onset of the pandemic (March 14, 2020) and they could have a maximum of one virtual care visit during the entire period. Patients who had no virtual care visits were also included in the low virtual care group, but they had to have at least one in-person visit in order to be included. This means we excluded patients who did not receive care at all during the pandemic period (after March 14, 2020). Patients in the high virtual care use group had to have at least 2 virtual care visits. There was no limit on the number of in-person visits patients could have in either group. To determine the level of healthcare utilization in each group, we examined the number of weekly hospitalizations, total ambulatory (outpatient) visits, ED visits, diagnostic tests, lab tests, and prescriptions for those over 65 years of age, from January 2018 to September 2020. A time-series analysis was done using interventional autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) modelling. Interventional ARIMA is a common technique used to better understand the impact of a significant event to time series data and to forecast future observations while accounting for components such as trend, seasonality, and autocorrelation [14]. A step function beginning on March 14, 2020 was applied to the model in order to determine whether there were significant shifts in utilization in each of the two groups before versus during the pandemic.

Results

Overall virtual care use

Between January 1, 2018 and January 15, 2021 there were just over 215 million virtual and in-person ambulatory care visits (73 460 386 in 2018, 73 629 600 in 2019 and 68 032 404 in 2020). Of these, 33 million visits were conducted virtually (933 099 in 2018, 1 234 082 in 2019 and 30 858 723 in 2020). The majority of virtual visits across the entire period (93%) occurred during the pandemic after the temporary virtual codes were introduced by the Ontario Ministry of Health in March 2020. Between March 15, 2020 and January 15, 2021, there were just over 32 million virtual visits completed. The average rate of virtual care visits was 48 visits per 1000 patients per week. The average rate of in-person visits was 34 visits per 1000 per week. In comparison, the average rate of virtual care before the pandemic was 1.4 visits per 1000 patients per week.

Between March 15 and July 1, 2021, total ambulatory care reduced by 22%, in-person visits reduced by 75%, and 69% of ambulatory care occurred virtually (12.1 million visits). Virtual care never dropped below 50% of all ambulatory care throughout the pandemic period (Fig 1). The majority of virtual care (94%) was delivered through the new billing codes, which allowed for phone or video visits through any platform.

Fig 1. Total number of virtual and in-person visits (line) and percent virtual care use out of total ambulatory care (bars).

Fig 1

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*All ambulatory visits = both in-person and virtual.

On a weekly basis, an average of 20 006 providers out of 23 835 practicing physicians (84%) provided at least one virtual care visit. Psychiatrists had the highest rates of virtual care with about 90% of care being virtual in the early months of the pandemic and mostly staying above 80% throughout the entire pandemic.

Virtual care use among patients with chronic disease

The use of virtual care increased in March 2020 across all chronic disease patient populations examined (Fig 2). The highest rates of virtual care visits were seen in CHF (151 visits per week per 1000 patients), COPD (126 visits per week per 1000 patients), and angina patients (116 visits per week per 1000 patients) (Table 1). The increase in virtual care use was associated with a sharp decline of in-person visits in March due to the start of the first Ontario lockdown. Across all conditions examined, in-person care decreased by 72–93%. This sharp decrease was followed by a gradual increase in in-person visits, but on average for the entire period examined after March 14, virtual care constituted at least half of the total care (55% of total care in CHF, 56% in COPD, 58% in hypertension and diabetes, 62% in asthma and angina and 72% in mental health care).

Fig 2. Weekly rate of virtual and in-person care visits per 1000 by medical condition.

Fig 2

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Table 1. Average weekly visit rates per 1000 patients by modality (virtual or in-person) before (Jan 2018 to Mar 2020) and during (Mar 2020 to Jan 2021) the pandemic across chronic conditions.

COPD CHF Mental Health
Before COVID-19 During COVID-19 % change Before COVID-19 During COVID-19 % change Before COVID-19 During COVID-19 % change
Virtual 3.4 126.2 3612 2.0 151.3 7465 4.0 101.6 2440
In-Person 220.7 98.5 -55.4 250.6 124.6 -50.3 150.3 39.8 -73.5
Total 224.1 224.7 0.3 252.6 275.9 9.2 154.3 141.4 -8.4
Angina Diabetes
Before COVID-19 During COVID-19 % change Before COVID-19 During COVID-19 % change
Virtual 3.4 116.4 3324 1.8 108.8 5944
In-Person 187.3 70.3 -62.5 184.6 77.6 -58.0
Total 190.6 186.7 -2.0 186.4 186.4 0
Asthma Hypertension
Before COVID-19 During COVID-19 % change Before COVID-19 During COVID-19 % change
Virtual 2.3 70.7 2974 1.6 92.2 5663
In-Person 122.9 44.1 -64.1 165.5 67.9 -59.0
Total 125.2 114.8 -8.3 167.1 160.0 -4.2
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Healthcare utilization among low and high virtual care users

Hospitalizations

High virtual care users had more hospitalizations than low virtual care users (average weekly volumes across conditions ranged from 1306–4205 admissions in high users versus 196–817 admissions in low users). Trends were similar across the four patient populations. Both low and high virtual care user groups experienced a statistically significant reduction in hospitalizations at the start of the pandemic on Mar 14, 2020 (from one month before to one month after Mar 14, average weekly volumes across conditions dropped from 233–896 to 176–605 admissions in low users and from 1496–5539 to 1040–3791 admissions in high users, p < .0001) (Fig 3). Despite the significant drop at the beginning of the pandemic, hospitalization volumes began to increase again among the high users (1379–5245 visits in first week of June 2020) as the pandemic progressed but hospitalization remained low among the low users (167–678 admissions in first week of June 2020). The percent change in the average number of hospitalizations from pre to post Mar 14, 2020 is shown in Table 2.

Fig 3. Weekly hospitalizations in high versus low virtual care users by medical condition, January 2018 to September 2020.

Fig 3

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Table 2. Percent change in the average number of hospitalizations, outpatient visits and lab testing from pre to post Mar 14, 2020.
Hospitalizations Outpatient Visits Lab Testing
Low Users High Users Low Users High Users Low Users High Users
CHF -9.4% 32.2% -31.5% 27.5% -34.3% -5.6%
MH -19.4% 28.1% -34.0% 31.0% -42.4% -6.9%
COPD -17.2% 17.3% -38.7% 14.5% -42.2% -17.1%
Diabetes -24.8% 21.4% -39.1% 15.1% -39.6% -16.9%
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(Low users = minimum of 1 ambulatory in-person or virtual visit but maximum of 1 virtual visit after March 14, 2020; High users = minimum of 2 virtual visits after March 14, 2020).

Outpatient visits

High virtual care users had higher outpatient visit volumes than low users (average weekly volumes across conditions ranged from 41,164–382,929 visits in high users versus 5865–68,724 visits in low users). Across all four patient populations, there was a statistically significant drop in visits among low virtual care users at the onset of the pandemic (from one month before to one month after Mar 14, average weekly volumes across conditions dropped from 6484–77,274 to 3794–44,062 visits, p < .0001), and visit volumes remained stagnant afterwards (4213–46,909 visits in first week of June 2020) (Fig 4). However, the number of outpatient visits among high users remained unaffected by the pandemic (44,777–421,875 visits at one month before to 42,407–402,199 visits at one month after Mar 14, p>0.5). High volumes were maintained throughout, and even appeared to be increasing during the pandemic (51,656–489,404 in first week of June 2020).

Fig 4. Weekly outpatient visits in high versus low virtual care users by medical condition, January 2018 to September 2020.

Fig 4

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Laboratory testing

Laboratory claims were higher overall among high virtual care users than low users (average weekly volumes across conditions ranged from 83,480–606,752 tests in high users versus 14,533–128,354 tests in low users). Both high user and low user patients across all four conditions experienced a significant drop in testing volumes coinciding with the start of the pandemic (from one month before to one month after Mar 14, average weekly volumes across conditions dropped from 16,230–155,905 to 5462–38,297 tests in low users and from 95,972–756,319 to 39,506–264,035 tests in high users, p < .0001) (Fig 5). However, volumes appeared to gradually increase again in both user groups as the pandemic progressed (in the first week of June 2020, low users: 9898–75,890 tests and high users: 82,270–604,512 tests).

Fig 5. Weekly laboratory testing in high versus low virtual care users by medical condition, January 2018 to September 2020.

Fig 5

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The p,d,q values of the best fit ARIMA models are reported in S1 File. Figures showing emergency department visits, prescriptions for those over 65 years of age and total patient cost for low and high virtual care users are also provided in S1 File.

Discussion

Our study examining data over the first 9 months of the COVID-19 pandemic showed that virtual care adoption (telephone and video) constituted at least 50% of all ambulatory care in Ontario, Canada. The strong adoption of virtual care in combination with some return of in-person care over later stages of the pandemic allowed physicians to maintain adequate levels of care for chronic disease patients during the pandemic. Virtual care was adopted across all chronic conditions examined, but the degree of uptake of virtual care varied. Differences in adoption rates of virtual care need to be considered when designing best practices of care and policies surrounding the continued use of virtual care. Patients who used more virtual care appeared to be higher users of the healthcare system in general before and during the pandemic. This suggests that higher use patients who had access to the healthcare system before the pandemic received similar access to the healthcare system during the pandemic though a combination of care services including virtual care. The percentage of visits that were virtual in Ontario, Canada (59%) was higher than rates reported in other countries such as the USA (30%) and Australia (42%) [4, 15, 16]. While there was some increase of in-person care in the May to September of 2020, the high adoption of virtual care was largely maintained throughout waves of the pandemic. Psychiatry had the highest rates of virtual care use during the pandemic. The use of any virtual care in psychiatry is enabled to a greater extent than other specialties simply due to the fact that most psychiatry visits do not require a physical examination [17]. Interestingly, while psychiatry previously reported 3 times the average rates of virtual care use in Ontario before the pandemic, these rates reduced to about double the rate of virtual care use during the pandemic. This relative reduction is likely due to the substantial shift to virtual care across other patient populations who previously did not have access to virtual care.

The pandemic led to an overall decrease of total ambulatory care (virtual or in-person) across all chronic diseases studied. This reduction in ambulatory visits and testing has been reported elsewhere [7, 10], with some reporting more severe impacts in diabetes management [8]. It has been suggested that the causes of these reductions in utilization are multifactorial and include patient avoidance of care, increased threshold of hospitalizations from providers, and changes in lifestyle and self-management in the context of lockdown measures and social distancing [10]. The decrease in total ambulatory care was a result of a very sharp drop of in-person care due to COVID-19 restrictions. Restrictions on in-person care, however, were accompanied by an increase in virtual care, which ultimately allowed patients with chronic disease to return to the same visit rate as they had before the onset of the pandemic and this finding is consistent with reports from other jurisdictions [18, 19]. This was likely due to both patients and providers adopting virtual care as part of their routine care and enabling the conversion of pre-pandemic in-person visits into virtual visits where possible [19].

The early weeks of the pandemic were also accompanied by reductions in hospitalization across both high and low virtual care users, while outpatient care reduced only for low virtual care users. Given both acute and outpatient care use was higher before the pandemic for high virtual care users relative to that of low virtual care users, it is likely that these patients were sicker before the pandemic and required continuous care during the pandemic. As more than half of the outpatient care was delivered virtually, the outpatient care that these patients received would have included a substantial virtual component. This finding supports the idea that virtual care afforded continued access to care for patients who were higher users of the healthcare system and likely sicker. This finding is consistent with reports that patients with greater disease burden having greater use of virtual care services during the pandemic [5, 18]. More stable patients with chronic disease had some contact with the system but were likely advised to hold off on care until the risk of infection from COVID-19 reduces. This reduction on non-urgent care was likely partially due to restrictions on elective procedures in the province in effect during the early stages of the pandemic, but it may also be a result of changes in physician prescribing and testing practices [18].

Limitations

Study limitations include limitations associated with health administrative data analysis, such as reliance on diagnostic billing codes and a lack of clinical details leading to an inability to report on what the reasons for visits were. Most chronic disease diagnostic codes have been validated [13], which improves our confidence. The biggest limitation of this study is that the data is collected in the context of a pandemic. It is unclear to what extent some of the relationships we see with virtual care are due to the fact that patients were receiving virtual care or due to the pandemic itself, where virtual care was likely the predominant method to receive any care. These findings should be re-examined once the pandemic is over and both in-person and virtual care are equally accessible. Finally, as the billing codes in Ontario do not distinguish between video and phone, we were unable to report with confidence on relative use of telephone versus video.

Conclusions

In conclusion, in this population-based, repeated cross-sectional study in the largest province of Canada, where a universal healthcare system supports reimbursements of virtual care during the pandemic, we find that virtual care was adopted across various chronic conditions, but the relative adoption of virtual care varied by condition. Further, more than half of ambulatory care was virtual. allowing for regular visits for patients with chronic conditions to be maintained during the pandemic. Patients who became greater users of virtual care were generally high users of the healthcare system before and during the pandemic, suggesting that virtual care provided continued access to care for patients who were higher users and potentially sicker. These findings suggest that proper frequency of visits of chronic disease patients can be maintained through a mix of in-person and virtual visits even in cases where the disease severity is higher. Long-term studies should examine, however, whether the quality of care received through a mixed in-person and virtual care model is the same as that received through in-person care alone in order to inform policy decisions about their continued use in the healthcare system.

Supporting information

S1 File

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file. (690.3KB, docx)

Data Availability

The data is not publicly available and access is limited to the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) (https://www.ices.on.ca/), which is a prescribed entity under section 45 of Ontario’s Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA). Researchers, students, policy makers or knowledge users who are affiliated with a publicly funded, not-for-profit organization and who want to obtain and analyze ICES data to answer a research question may submit a request to ICES DAS (https://www.ices.on.ca/DAS/Public-Sector). DAS staff will contact the requestor to discuss the project’s feasibility, timeline and cost. Projects requesting access to data require the approval of a research ethics board. We are happy to share our data creation plan specifying our analyses if you contact the corresponding author and in turn you can use the information in the data creation plan to run the same or follow-up analyses. A list of all datasets used is available in the paper. All billing codes used are listed in the Supporting information files.

Funding Statement

This work was funded through the Ontario Ministry of Health as funds provided to the Centre for Digital Health Evaluation at Women’s College Hospital, Toronto, Ontario. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Decision Letter 0

Juan F Orueta

2 Dec 2021

PONE-D-21-24910Virtual care use during the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on healthcare utilization in patients with chronic disease: a population-based repeated cross-sectional study.PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Stamenova,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

  • Please, address the points raised by the reviewers. However, take into account the PLOS ONE criteria for publication. To be accepted in PLOS ONE, manuscripts must be technically sound and the work must be conducted with analytical rigor, but the PLOS ONE criteria do not include “sufficiently novel”.

  • Revise the references to include other scholars studies related to the use of virtual clinic during COVID-19.

  • Besides, I have other minor points:
    • The work of Dr Bhatia (ref 1) discusses about the potential risks of deferring medical care, but not specifically about ACSC.
    • Line 127: the sum of the four groups of visits is 215 million, instead of 218
    • There is a typo in the numbering of tables (table 2 appears before table 1)

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Reviewer #4: Yes

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**********

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Reviewer #1: General Comments

Thank you for the opportunity to review this paper. Overall, I thank the authors for a well-written manuscript on charting the use of virtual healthcare services across the most common chronic diseases in Ontario both pre- and post-pandemic. As the COVID-19 situation continues, and the world adapts gradually to a post-pandemic new normal, I agree with the authors that it is timely to understand rates of virtual healthcare utilisation stratified by the various chronic care conditions that are more or less likely to transit into a virtual care modality. Further to this, specific exploratory studies and interventions can then be designed to understand barriers and facilitators to the use of telemedicine in primary and acute care.

I have a few minor comments (see below) to advise the authors in strengthening their manuscript. Wishing you all the best in your research!

Introduction

- (Line 67) Looks like a missing word in "it is also unclear if virtual care *is* able..."

Methods

- Under "Data Sources", how thorough is the coverage of these administrative databases in comparison to Ontario's total healthcare utilisation? It would be good to have an approximation if possible, as that gives the reader an indication of the generalisability of this study's findings.

Discussion

- (Lines 229 - 231) Is this claim necessarily true? I understand that the data sources used in this study may not contain sociodemographic or economic information, but is there a possibility that patients who received the most care before and during the pandemic (including use of virtual care services) simply had more access to care? Does virtual care service use reflect sociodemographic distributions, and is there any data on this in the national or published literature?

- (Line 234) This is a minor point, but it may be useful to use a range of months instead of seasons for the benefit of equatorial or southern hemisphere readers.

- (Lines 236 - 237) What is this government-run platform (I believe this is the first time it has been mentioned in this manuscript)? Is there any reason for the disparity in usage among healthcare professionals? Are there other teleconsult/telehealth platforms not run by the government? A brief elaboration of Ontario's virtual care infrastructure could be useful in strengthening the discussion.

- (Line 246) Minor comment on inconsistent referencing style.

- (Lines 253 - 255) While there is a possibility that this is the case, I would argue whether other health services-related factors could have contributed to this phenomenon. For example, is it possible that many pre-pandemic in-patient visits were actually unnecessary and the pandemic simply led healthcare providers to realise that the same level of care could be provided virtually? This is an important point of further discussion for the topic of healthcare utilisation.

- (Lines 259 - 260) Is there any citable evidence to support this phenomenon in Ontario?

Reviewer #2: Although the undertaken topic is interesting and the use of virtual clinics requires attention from researches, the findings presented in this article add no value to literature and neither to the practice. The paper, in present form lacks novelty and implications. The objective of the paper is also too simplistic.

Additional I shall note, the introduction of the paper lacks presentation of results of other scholars studies relating to the use of virtual clinic during COVID-19.

Reviewer #3: Virtual care use during the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on healthcare utilization in patients with chronic disease: a population-based repeated cross-sectional study

Below are comments to improve the manuscript;

Re-write the Background: in the abstract

The paper is not well written. Incude the introduction, literature review..

The main objective and research questions to be explored are missing

The conculsion section is missing.

The discussion can be improved.

Several studies on Virtual care use during the COVID-19 pandemic are missing in the manuscript only 10 sources were cited.

Reviewer #4: The authors intended to provide information on the levels of use of virtual care services and of healthcare utilization using the health administrative data. The results showed the increased use of virtual care, and decreased hospitalizations and laboratory testing at the start of the pandemic, while increased later in high virtual care users. This is more a descriptive report. The manuscript was well prepared. Some minor comments were as follows.

1. line 111. patient had a maximum of one virtual care visit were classified into low virtual care users. does this mean it doesn’t count the numbers of in-person visit? what if they have more in-personal care visit? it should be clarified.

2. Figure. it seems that there was clear drop from Jan-March. Any explanation?

3. This manuscript is more a descriptive oriented report. But it would be helpful to provide some public health implications based on the reported results.

**********

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Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

Reviewer #4: No

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PLoS One. 2022 Apr 25;17(4):e0267218. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0267218.r002

Author response to Decision Letter 0

20 Feb 2022

Dear Editor and Reviewers,

Thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript. We have taken all your comments into consideration and have made changes to the manuscript. You can see our detailed responses to your comments below.

We look forward to your decision.

Best Regards,

Vess Stamenova on behalf of all co-authors

Editorial Requests

Revise the references to include other scholars studies related to the use of virtual clinic during COVID-19.

Please note that we have revised the introduction and the discussion and have included some more recent literature evidence. Tracked changes are included in the document and more detailed responses found below with the reviewers

The work of Dr Bhatia (ref 1) discusses about the potential risks of deferring medical care, but not specifically about ACSC.

Thank you for flagging this issue. We have removed the reference to ACSC.

Line 127: the sum of the four groups of visits is 215 million, instead of 218

Thanks for catching that. We have corrected this.

There is a typo in the numbering of tables (table 2 appears before table 1)

Thanks for noticing this. We have corrected this.

Reviewer 1

(Line 67) Looks like a missing word in "it is also unclear if virtual care *is* able..."

Thank you. We added “was” to the sentence.

Under "Data Sources", how thorough is the coverage of these administrative databases in comparison to Ontario's total healthcare utilisation? It would be good to have an approximation if possible, as that gives the reader an indication of the generalisability of this study's findings.

We have now added the following statement in the introduction: “In Ontario, the most populated province in Canada, the healthcare system is publicly funded and the data we used covers all healthcare services used(13). It, therefore, presents an opportunity to examine shifts in care at a population-level.”

(Lines 229 - 231) Is this claim necessarily true? I understand that the data sources used in this study may not contain sociodemographic or economic information, but is there a possibility that patients who received the most care before and during the pandemic (including use of virtual care services) simply had more access to care? Does virtual care service use reflect sociodemographic distributions, and is there any data on this in the national or published literature?

That’s true. Low users of the system may be low users due to poor access and if anything the data suggests that the higher users with good access continued to have good access, but those with low use (due to poor access or lack of need) continued to have a low use. We have rephrased our language around that statement now and on p.11 we state:

“This suggests that higher use patients who had access to the healthcare system before the pandemic received similar access to the healthcare system during the pandemic though a combination of care services including virtual care.”

(Line 234) This is a minor point, but it may be useful to use a range of months instead of seasons for the benefit of equatorial or southern hemisphere readers.

Noted. We have changed this now to say May to Sep.

(Lines 236 - 237) What is this government-run platform (I believe this is the first time it has been mentioned in this manuscript)? Is there any reason for the disparity in usage among healthcare professionals? Are there other teleconsult/telehealth platforms not run by the government? A brief elaboration of Ontario's virtual care infrastructure could be useful in strengthening the discussion.

Thanks for noting that.

Generally, in Ontario access to virtual care before the pandemic was limited to specialists and some primary care physicians. These physicians had access only to a standard provincial videoconferencing platform that they were to use for virtual care visits and they were not allowed to use any other platforms (e.g. Zoom). Once the pandemic started all providers were allowed to use any platform they chose to (by the province creating temporary virtual care billing codes), which allowed much more flexibility for physicians to conduct virtual care. Most physicians used the other platforms and not the government run platform. Psychiatrists who were the highest users of virtual care before the pandemic were already using the government run platform and while most of care in psychiatry was also done through other platforms during the pandemic, some providers likely decided to continue using the government run platform and therefore they were the highest users of that platform. Overall, the platform was used very little, however (less than 6% of all virtual care).

We have decided to omit that point from the paper, as we don’t think it adds much to our objectives of describing virtual care use or to explaining the data.

(Line 246) Minor comment on inconsistent referencing style.

Thanks for noting that. We have referenced now the correct article in proper referencing style.

(Lines 253 - 255) While there is a possibility that this is the case, I would argue whether other health services-related factors could have contributed to this phenomenon. For example, is it possible that many pre-pandemic in-patient visits were actually unnecessary and the pandemic simply led healthcare providers to realise that the same level of care could be provided virtually? This is an important point of further discussion for the topic of healthcare utilisation.

We agree. We have modified our statements to say that the causes listed here relate more to reductions in total ambulatory care, as opposed to just in-person care and we have added some statements to reflect your suggestions. The paragraph now reads:

“The pandemic led to an initial overall decrease of total ambulatory care across all chronic diseases studied. This reduction in ambulatory visits and testing has been reported elsewhere(4,6), with some reporting more severe impacts in diabetes management(5). It has been suggested that the causes of these reductions in utilization are multifactorial and include patient avoidance of care, increased threshold of hospitalizations from providers, and changes in lifestyle and self-management in the context of lockdown measures and social distancing(6). The decrease in total ambulatory care was a result of a very sharp drop of in-person care due to COVID-19 restrictions. Restrictions on in-person care, however, were accompanied by an increase in virtual care, which ultimately allowed patients with chronic disease to return to the same visit rate as they had before the onset of the pandemic. This was likely due to both patients and providers adopting virtual care as part of their routine care and enabling the conversion of pre-pandemic in-person visits into virtual visits where possible.(19) “

- (Lines 259 - 260) Is there any citable evidence to support this phenomenon in Ontario?

Yes. Elective procedures were cancelled during the early stages of the pandemic and there have been reports on changes in physician behavior. We have added this to our manuscript now on p. 13:

“This reduction on non-urgent care was likely partially due to restrictions on elective procedures in the province in effect during the early stages of the pandemic, but it may also be a result of changes in physician prescribing and testing practices(18).”

Reviewer 2

Although the undertaken topic is interesting and the use of virtual clinics requires attention from researches, the findings presented in this article add no value to literature and neither to the practice. The paper, in present form lacks novelty and implications. The objective of the paper is also too simplistic.

Additional I shall note, the introduction of the paper lacks presentation of results of other scholars studies relating to the use of virtual clinic during COVID-19.

Please note that we have revised the introduction and the discussion and have included some more recent literature evidence. Tracked changes are included in the document.

We have added another four references supporting the reduction in preventative measures in Canada and the initial reduction in hospitalizations seen early in the pandemic.

Reviewer 3

Re-write the Background: in the abstract

We have clarified that we are reporting a population-level study that encompasses data from most of Ontario’s population.

The paper is not well written. Incude the introduction, literature review..

We have revised the introduction extensively and have included some more recent references to it.

The main objective and research questions to be explored are missing

The objective of the study is listed in the last paragraph of the introduction section:

“The goals of our study were to provide a description of the levels of use of virtual care services, relative to in-person care in patients with chronic disease across Ontario, Canada and to describe levels of healthcare utilization in low versus high ¬virtual care users.”

The conculsion section is missing.

The conclusion statement was the last paragraph. This has now been formatted to PLoS One style and is separated in a distinct section with its own subheading.

The discussion can be improved.

We have made changes to the discussion based on the feedback provided by the other reviewers.

- We have made changes to comments regarding reductions in total (as opposed to in-person) ambulatory care

- We have added separate explanation regarding reductions in in-person care alone, incorporating one of the reviewer’s comments about virtual care being adopted more by both physicians and patients

- We have added supporting literature on the idea that patients that received more virtual care had poorer health overall.

- We have added comments around the greater public health implications of our findings.

Several studies on Virtual care use during the COVID-19 pandemic are missing in the manuscript only 10 sources were cited.

Please note that we have revised the introduction and the discussion and have included 8 more references. Tracked changes are included in the document.

Reviewer 4

line 111. patient had a maximum of one virtual care visit were classified into low virtual care users. does this mean it doesn’t count the numbers of in-person visit? what if they have more in-personal care visit? it should be clarified.

Please note that we have clarified this on p.6, stating:

“To examine differences in healthcare utilization between patients who use virtual care and those who do not, we classified patients into two groups based on their use of virtual care. Low virtual care users had at least one visit (virtual or in-person) after the onset of the pandemic (March 14, 2020) and they could have a maximum of one virtual care visit during the entire period. Patients who had no virtual care visits were also included in the low virtual care group, but they had to have at least one in-person visit in order to be included. This means we excluded patients who did not receive care at all during the pandemic period (after March 14, 2020). Patients in the high virtual care use group had to have at least 2 virtual care visits. There was no limit on the number of in-person visits patients could have in either group.”

Figure. it seems that there was clear drop from Jan-March. Any explanation?

The drops that seem to be in Jan-March are actually in late December and are due to holiday closures.

This manuscript is more a descriptive oriented report. But it would be helpful to provide some public health implications based on the reported results.

Please note that we have included the following in our conclusion statement:

“These findings suggest that proper frequency of visits of chronic disease patients can be maintained through a mix of in-person and virtual visits even in cases where the disease severity is higher. Long-term studies should examine, however, whether the quality of care received through a mixed in-person and virtual care model is the same as that received through in-person care alone in order to inform policy decisions about their continued use in the healthcare system.”

Attachment

Submitted filename: PLoS Response to reviewers Letter Jan11.docx

Click here for additional data file. (29.4KB, docx)

Decision Letter 1

Juan F Orueta

5 Apr 2022

Virtual care use during the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on healthcare utilization in patients with chronic disease: a population-based repeated cross-sectional study.

PONE-D-21-24910R1

Dear Dr. Stamenova,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

However,  there are some very minor flaws to be corrected

  • I have noticed several typos. The first one is relevant. Please revise the whole manuscript:

Line 101: the figures of the percentage are missing (“databases cover ??% of healthcare”)

Line 71: “a” after the full stop

Line 168: This title should maintain a similar format to the other ones.

Line 171: There is an unnecessary slash (“/angina”)

Line 255: There is a repeated full stop.

  • Aditionally, the results for hospitalizations might produce some confusion (page 9). In lines 189; 193; 194; 196; and 197 the figures correspond to volumes of hospitalizations. It would be clearer if were referred as “admissions” instead of “visits”.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Juan F. Orueta, MD, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Acceptance letter

Juan F Orueta

14 Apr 2022

PONE-D-21-24910R1

Virtual care use during the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on healthcare utilization in patients with chronic disease: a population-based repeated cross-sectional study.

Dear Dr. Stamenova:

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org.

If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org.

Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access.

Kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Juan F. Orueta

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Associated Data

    This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

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    Submitted filename: PLoS Response to reviewers Letter Jan11.docx

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    Data Availability Statement

    The data is not publicly available and access is limited to the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) (https://www.ices.on.ca/), which is a prescribed entity under section 45 of Ontario’s Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA). Researchers, students, policy makers or knowledge users who are affiliated with a publicly funded, not-for-profit organization and who want to obtain and analyze ICES data to answer a research question may submit a request to ICES DAS (https://www.ices.on.ca/DAS/Public-Sector). DAS staff will contact the requestor to discuss the project’s feasibility, timeline and cost. Projects requesting access to data require the approval of a research ethics board. We are happy to share our data creation plan specifying our analyses if you contact the corresponding author and in turn you can use the information in the data creation plan to run the same or follow-up analyses. A list of all datasets used is available in the paper. All billing codes used are listed in the Supporting information files.

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