Racial inequity in follow-up appointment attendance after hospitalization disappears as telemedicine adopted

Medical Xpress January 19, 2022
Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

Telemedicine appears to be a key to reducing racial inequities in follow-up care after hospitalization, according to numbers collected amid the pandemic by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. As 2020 progressed and telemedicine became one of the main modes for primary care visits, attendance or “show” rates at follow-up appointments after hospitalization climbed among Black patients from 52 to 70 percent. This was comparable to white patients, whose visit completion rates at primary care follow-up appointments were 67 percent by the middle of 2020. The research was published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

“While there remain important open questions about the relative quality of different kinds of telemedicine appointments, our findings...

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