Sociodemographic determinants of telehealth utilisation in general practice during the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia.

There is limited data on the patterns of telehealth utilisation during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this analysis, we aimed to understand the sociodemographic characteristics of patients for telehealth utilisation in general practice (primary care) in Australia. We used electronic health records of 860 general practice providers in the states of New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria from March 2020 until 31 August 2021. We calculated the proportion of telehealth in general practice over time and applied generalised estimating equations in multivariate regression models to estimate odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the associations with 1) telehealth (telephone and video) versus in-person consultations and 2) video versus phone consultations. Our sample included 3,161,868 patients (44% aged 45+; 56% female) who received 24,527,274 consultations. Of these consultations, 37.6% were telehealth visits, including 2.4% using video and 35.2% using phone. There was a significant interaction between Year (2020 and 2021) and State (NSW and Victoria) (p <0.001) in telehealth utilisation. Furthermore, men (adjusted OR: 0.78; 95% CI:0.78, 0.79) and those from non-English speaking countries (0.76; 0.75, 0.77) were less likely to have telehealth consults than their counterparts. People aged 45 years and over [(0.75; 0.74, 0.77) for 45-69 y, (0.57; 0.55, 0.58) for 70+y versus 20-44 y], living in rural areas (0.87; 0.84, 0.89), and those from non-English speaking countries (0.63; 0.60, 0.66) tended to less likely to use video than phone consults compared to their counterparts. Our data suggest that the utilisation of video in general practice was particularly low during the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia. The low usage of video/virtual care among those in older age groups, from non-English speaking countries, and residing in rural areas points to the gaps in the optimisation of telehealth utilisation in primary care. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.