How would COVID-19 protocols have impacted on continuity of care of hypertension patients

Objective: To investigate the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on the continuity of care (COC) in hypertension patients. Additionally, the factor of whether participants were treated by telemedicine or not was also considered.MethodsNational Health Insurance and Medical Aid claims This study used data from the Republic of Korea between 2019 and 2020. The multiple regression analysis was performed to identify the differences in visits and the Most Frequent Provider Continuity (MFPC) of hypertensive patients before and after the COVID-19. To confirm the effect of telemedicine, additional analysis was performed with data that deleted cases that received telemedicine.FindingsA total of 5,791,812 hypertensive patients are included in this study. When the confounding variables were adjusted, the MFPC decreased by 0.0031 points after the COVID-19. It also showed the same results for MFPC when telemedicine cases were excluded. The number of outpatient clinic visit days decreased by 0.2930 days after the COVID-19. Without telemedicine cases, the number of outpatient clinic visit days decreased by 0.3330 days after the COVID-19.ConclusionThe COVID-19 protocols did not affect hypertension patients' COC but impacted their outpatient frequency. Additionally, when telemedicine cases are considered, COC was the same, but the patient’s outpatient frequency had decreased, but not as much as when telemedicine cases were considered.