A University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) study has found that COVID-19 sparked a big jump in the use of digital health services for prenatal care that remained higher than pre-pandemic levels through late 2021.
Published in JAMA Network Open, the study using a national database showed that telehealth use during a 40-week pregnancy went from 1.1% for deliveries in January 2020 to 17.3% for deliveries in November 2020, before declining to 9.9% by October 2021.
“The findings could be used to design telehealth-integrated prenatal care models, but we would first need to determine the best combination of digital health and in-person visits,” said Mahip Acharya, PhD, the paper’s first author. Acharya is a senior data analyst for the Rural Telehealth Evaluation Center at the UAMS Institute for Digital Health & Innovation.
Hari Eswaran, PhD, is the study’s principal investigator and professor and vice chair for research in the College of Medicine Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and director of research at the institute.
The team used IQVIA PharMetrics Plus for Academics, a health insurance claims database that includes commercially insured individuals in the United States. The database provided de-identified information on 45,203 pregnancies during the study period.
Other study findings included that those with anxiety and depression were more likely to use digital health services for a prenatal appointment, and pregnant women with Medicaid used digital health appointments at higher rates during the pandemic than those with commercial insurance.