Without knowing the degree to which different types of primary care services were impacted by the pandemic, it is difficult to estimate the value of the forgone care and the potential implications for health outcomes. There is some evidence that older Canadians accessed more primary care visits during the pandemic than younger Canadians, however the reasons for those visits are unknown. In Canada, over half of family physician visits involve patients with chronic diseases, and this increases with advancing age. A 2018 review found that acute respiratory infections, chronic diseases (i.e., hypertension, diabetes, arthritis), anxiety or depression, routine health maintenance, and back pain were among the most common clinician reported reasons for a primary care visit. To fill this gap, we first need to know the reasons why patients seek primary care, and how this may have changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The World Organization of Family Doctors (WONCA) Europe has identified a lack of evidence regarding the management of non-COVID-19 patients in primary care during the pandemic. Although changes in primary care practice occurred rapidly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the implications of these changes have yet to be determined. In primary care settings, physicians were encouraged to triage medical appointments, prioritize services that would prevent acute care hospitalization, and increase their use of virtual care. Governments around the world have implemented policies to prioritize the use of health care resources to treat patients with COVID-19 and to prevent the spread of the disease, including decreasing non-COVID hospital admissions and delaying elective surgeries. The COVID-19 pandemic has presented unprecedented challenges in primary health care worldwide since it was first declared in March 2020. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. įunding: This study was made possible by a CIHR Operating Grant: COVID-19 Mental Health & Substance Use – Matching Access to Service with Needs: grant #450302 (PI: KT). Researchers interested in accessing EMR data from the UTOPIAN Data Safe Haven for research can apply to do so at. 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.ĭata Availability: The research ethics approval for the use of UTOPIAN data does not permit making the data publicly available, as the data contain potentially identifiable patient information. Received: ApAccepted: JPublished: August 12, 2021Ĭopyright: © 2021 Stephenson et al. PLoS ONE 16(8):Įditor: Christine Leong, University of Manitoba, CANADA (2021) Changes in the top 25 reasons for primary care visits during the COVID-19 pandemic in a high-COVID region of Canada. Citation: Stephenson E, Butt DA, Gronsbell J, Ji C, O’Neill B, Crampton N, et al.
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