The 2024 Crohn’s & Colitis Congress featured multiple sessions on management strategies for patients with IBD, emphasizing a multidisciplinary approach to optimize care. Multiple presentations explored the use of telehealth to achieve this goal.
Positive Impact of Telehealth on Follow-Up Care
Lead author Jeffrey Olson, MD, and coinvestigators reported that telehealth supported patient retention and multidisciplinary follow-up care at a tertiary IBD center.
The study included patients who received care from January 2018 to March 2020 and August 2020 to January 2023. Due to precautions that included mandatory telehealth, researchers excluded March 2020 through August 2020.
The clinic requires all new patients to be seen in person. However, patients with follow-up visits after August 2020 could be seen in person or virtually.
The study included 7,040 patients. Patients were predominantly White (89%), more than half were women (56%), and most (76%) had commercial insurance.
Overall, patients who had at least one year of follow-up were more likely to be seen as a return visit after the pandemic when compared with the prepandemic period (84% vs 76%; P<0.05).
In the post-COVID period, 62% of patients opted for telehealth for their follow-up care.
“Telehealth is an effective strategy for continued multidisciplinary care at a tertiary care IBD center,” Dr. Olson and colleagues concluded.
Interdisciplinary Care Access for Newly Diagnosed Patients
In another abstract, a team of investigators evaluated the use of telemedicine to deliver interdisciplinary care for patients newly diagnosed with IBD.
“Interdisciplinary care is increasingly being recognized as important in the care of [patients with IBD]. However, access to additional resources to do this are frequently only available in tertiary-care IBD centers,” lead author Ayanna Lewis, MD, and coauthors noted.
The pilot study involved 12 patients who were diagnosed with IBD in the 18 months before the study. Patients had access to a physician at the IBD Center, a nutritionist specializing in IBD, an experienced IBD clinical pharmacist, and a licensed clinical social worker.
Patients used telehealth for all appointments, and researchers provided recommendations electronically to the patient and their gastroenterologist. Patients reported overall satisfaction with telemedicine, and researchers found there were no major barriers to implementing virtual care.
“This approach may also help in achieving health equity for underserved IBD patient populations,” Dr. Lewis and coauthors concluded.
