Continued Use of Telehealth In Oncology Patients (Preprint)

Abstract

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, telehealth represented a small portion of our oncology practice. Despite offering telehealth availability, fewer than 10% of patients agreed to virtual visits. Administratively, there were concerns about patients’ ability to use the technology, a change in the traditional in office dynamic, questions about whether patients would consistently use these platforms, etc. At the height of the pandemic, as much as 30% of our practice became fully telehealth. As the height of the pandemic has waned, we continue to offer telehealth for both new and establishing patients. We opted to retrospectively look at the continued use of telehealth in our practice.

Our objective was to determine if patients who did an initial telehealth visit would request future telehealth visits or if they would opt to return to the traditional in office model. Patients treated in 2022 were offered repeat telehealth visits or in person visits by the scheduling staff after their visit. The offer was presented without offering any bias toward future visit.

25% of our practice has dedicated telehealth slots. Of patients who opted for a telehealth visit, we followed future visits to determine if they opted to continue use of telehealth technology. We also looked at the age of the patient and the diagnosis of the patient to look for trends.

With a retrospective review of 99 charts, we separated patients into new visits to the cancer center vs patients who were already established. Of the 23 new patient visits, 14 were for a new diagnosis of solid tumor oncology and nine had a hematologic diagnosis. The average age of these patients was 55 (32-80). 13/21 (62%) who had repeat visits did so virtually. Of 76 patients who were already established, 43 had a hematologic diagnosis, 33 a solid tumor diagnosis. The average age was 61 (21-88). 55/76 (72%) opted for repeat telehealth visits. No clear trends in terms of age or diagnosis emerged in terms of who accepted repeat telehealth visits.

For patients who had an initial telehealth visit, it was likely they would continue to use this technology. Concerns about the age of patient or type of diagnosis did not preclude continued use of telehealth. This supports the continued use of telehealth in the post pandemic setting.

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