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Regardless of the growth of digital care in Ontario prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, specialist physicians didn’t increase their attain to sufferers residing at nice distances from the place they offered care, finds analysis printed within the Canadian Medical Affiliation Journal.
“We found that widespread availability of virtual care, accompanied by remuneration changes, was not associated with substantial expansion of specialists’ practices to serve patients who lived farther away,” writes Dr. Natasha Saunders, a pediatrician at The Hospital for Sick Kids (SickKids); adjunct scientist, ICES; and affiliate professor, College of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, with co-authors.
About 18% of Canada’s inhabitants lives in rural areas, however solely 2.2% of specialists apply in these areas. It has been extensively advised that digital care may improve entry to well being look after folks in rural areas.
To know whether or not modifications in digital care in Ontario—which included billing codes and technological infrastructure to allow doctor use—prolonged the attain of specialist care, researchers in contrast driving distance and driving time between sufferers and physicians in a pre–digital care interval (January 1, 2019, to November 30, 2019) and a digital care interval (January 1, 2022, to November 30, 2022). The research included greater than 11,000 specialists and greater than 5.3 million sufferers who had over 25 million visits through the digital care interval.
The researchers didn’t discover significant modifications in distance between sufferers and specialists, besides in psychiatry, the place there have been modest modifications throughout all measures.
“If virtual care is to increase access to specialty care for rural patients, efforts are required to identify and target other barriers to virtual care, one of which could be that providers refer to specialists within their own self-contained networks,” the authors write. “In other words, rural patients may not be referred to specialists who are far away because their provider is not aware of them. Centralized referral systems could pool patient referrals and match patients to specialists.”
The authors additionally recommend contemplating affected person preferences may improve the usage of digital care amongst sufferers who might need well being situations or transportation or time challenges that may make digital care a greater choice.
“To make virtual care more accessible, especially for patients living in rural areas, attention should be paid to other factors such as referral patterns and the role of patients in determining the type of visit they prefer,” the authors conclude.
Extra data:
Adjustments in driving distance to specialist physicians within the period of digital care: a population-based cohort research in Ontario, Canada, Canadian Medical Affiliation Journal (2025). DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.250166
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Canadian Medical Affiliation Journal
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Examine finds digital care growth didn’t increase specialist entry in rural areas of Canada through the pandemic (2025, September 22)
retrieved 22 September 2025
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