The impact of telemedicine on physician time invested in primary care: a large population-based descriptive study.

Aims: To evaluate the impact of telemedicine on the workload of primary care physicians (PCPs).

Background: Telemedicine, including video visits, telephone visits, and digital correspondence, is increasingly offered by physicians, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic. It is still unclear whether increasing the variety of services creates an increase in demand and therefore causes an increase in the workload of PCPs. In this study.

Methods: A population-based descriptive study, conducted during the 2020-2021 period, on a cohort of 464,119 patients, all members of Leumit Health Services and without a diagnosis of COVID-19. The patients were stratified into three distinct groups based on the nature of their healthcare visits: Patients who used only face-to-face (FTF) visits; Patients who used asynchronous visits with or without FTF visits but did not use synchronous telemedicine visit; and patients who used synchronous telemedicine visits with or without other types of visits. We performed a comparative analysis on Accumulated Annual Duration of Time (AADT) as an index for workload, across the different periods, using standard descriptive statistics methods.

Findings: Telemedicine use was higher in older persons, females, those of higher socioeconomic status, and patients with comorbidities. The greater the number of telemedicine visits, the greater the time the PCP spent on visits during the year. The largest increase in AADT (56.1%) was observed in patients who had only FTF meetings in 2020 but in 2021 made all types of visits. Overall, there was an increase of 2.5% in time invested in 2021 and a 5.8% increase in the number of patients making digital visits.

Conclusions: Policymakers encouraging telemedicine should consider the additional load on PCPs associated with telemedicine use and plan resources accordingly.