Introduction: Telemedicine is increasing in popularity but the impact of this shift on patient outcomes has not been well described. Prior data has shown that early post-discharge office visits can reduce readmissions. However, it is unknown if routine use of telemedicine visits for this purpose is similarly beneficial.
Materials and methods: We conducted a retrospective observational study using electronic health records data to assess if the rate of 30-day hospital readmissions differed between modality of visit for primary care or cardiology post-discharge follow-up visits.
Results: Compared to discharges with completed in-person follow-up visits, the adjusted odds of readmission for those with telemedicine follow-up visits was not significantly different (odds ratio [OR] 0.96, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.61 to 1.51, P = 0.86).
Conclusions: Our study showed that 30-day readmission rate did not differ significantly according to the modality of visit. These results provide reassurance that telemedicine visits are a safe and viable alternative for primary care or cardiology post-hospitalization follow-up.
Copyright: © 2023 Grauer et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.