DOI: 10.3886/icpsr39346.v1
title: Evaluating the Comparative Effectiveness of Telemedicine in Primary Care: Learning from the COVID-19 Pandemic, New York, 2021
title: Version 1

description: During the COVID-19 pandemic, telemedicine emerged as the primary method of providing outpatient care in many regions with shelter-in-place and social distancing policies. This study aimed understand the impact of this rapid and widespread transition from in-person to remote visits on disparities in access to primary care, especially in chronic disease where ongoing communication between providers and patients is essential.
The newly developed or expanded telemedicine programs varied widely, raising questions about the effect of these differences on uptake of telemedicine among different patient populations and on patient-centered outcomes. Leveraging a natural experiment approach, this study examined rapidly changing telemedicine and in-person models of care during and after the COVID-19 crisis to determine whether certain patients could safely choose to continue telemedicine or telemedicine-supplemented care, rather than return to in-person care.
description: The purpose of this study was to understand the impact of the rapid and widespread transition from in-person to remote visits on disparities in access to primary care.
description: A survey was developed to collect patient-reported outcomes (PROs) through REDCap surveys at Weill Cornell Medicine, delivered via a patient portal. The research team collected PROs on patient experiences based on the Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire (PSQ-18) (5-point subscale), which includes patient satisfaction, communication quality with providers, and accessibility/convenience of care.
For individuals who accessed a telemedicine visit, the survey asked questions adapted from the validated Telemedicine Usability Questionnaire (TUQ), including the ease of use and access to the telemedicine service, quality of the interaction with the provider, and satisfaction.
description: This data included variables regarding patient characteristics, reasons for patients' visits, perceptions of patient-clinician communication and quality of the visit.
description: Presence of Common Scales: 
Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire (PSQ-18) (5-point subscale)
Telemedicine Usability Questionnaire (TUQ)
description: The survey was fielded to adult patients 18 years of age and older, who received an in-person or telemedicine visit at any primary care practice affiliated with Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM), a large academic health care system in New York, NY.
For Weill Cornell patients, during the Epic MyChart (also known as Connect) eCheck-In, patients were given the opportunity to indicate their preference (Yes, No, or Undecided) and signed a consent form to consent to be contacted for research.
Only individuals that agreed to be contacted for research were emailed the survey through REDCap.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: Evaluating the Comparative Effectiveness of Telemedicine in Primary Care: Learning from the COVID-19 Pandemic, New York, 2021
description: Adult patients who received an in-person or telemedicine visit at any primary care practice affiliated with Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM) in New York, NY.
description: web-based surveyThis study includes 111 variables total for both English and Spanish responses. The Spanish responses share the same variable name as the English responses, but to make them distinguishable, "_V2" has been appended to the end of each variable name. In the data, these variables are grouped together in some instances, but also follow one another in other instances.