Abstract No. 496 Telemedicine in outpatient interventional radiology: practice patterns during COVID-19

Abstract

With the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic, interventional radiology (IR) clinics nationwide have adopted a virtual healthcare delivery model. The purpose of this study was to gauge the success of virtual visits at an outpatient interventional radiology practice in Washington, DC and compare the demographics and types of conditions seen before and after the transition to telemedicine. In this IRB-approved retrospective study, appointments scheduled with interventional radiology at an academic tertiary care institution between April 1st, 2019 and July 15th, 2019 were compared with appointments scheduled during the same time frame in 2020. All appointments scheduled in 2019 were in-office visits while all appointments scheduled in 2020 were telemedicine visits. Charts were reviewed for sociodemographic characteristics, types of visits, diagnoses, comorbidities, and scheduled procedures. Descriptive statistics and Pearson’s chi-squared tests were used to compare appointments scheduled in 2019 and 2020. Of 180 appointments, 66.6% (n = 100) were scheduled in 2019 and 44.4% (n = 80) were scheduled in 2020. There was no difference in age, age ranges, gender, race distribution, or insurance status between both groups. While a greater percentage of patients presented for oncology-related problems in 2020 than in 2019, the overall difference in presenting problems was not significant (P = 0.13). The percentage of follow-up patients rose from 44.0% in 2019 to 56.3% in 2020 (P = 0.10). Of all telemedicine encounters, 91.3% demonstrated success of establishing a two-way secure audio and video connection with patients. This interventional radiology department cared for similar demographics of patients and case types via telemedicine visits when compared to clinic visits of the same time frame in 2019. While limited by the small sample size, these results indicate that outpatient interventional radiology practices are amenable to transitioning to online-only visits with improved ability to perform longer term follow up.