Document Type

Capstone Experience

Graduation Date

5-2021

Degree Name

Master of Public Health

Department

Epidemiology

First Committee Member

Shinobu Watanabe-Galloway, PhD

Second Committee Member

Kendra Ratnapradipa, PhD

Third Committee Member

Steven Wengel, MD

Abstract

Introduction: The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic led to a significant rise in the use of telehealth for healthcare delivery. The University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) outpatient psychiatry clinic began using telehealth for nearly all patient visits shortly after the pandemic began. This project was intended to evaluate the effects of this change on patient visits with the geriatric psychiatry department at UNMC. For the months of April-August 2020 and April-August 2019, when in-person visits were still the norm, the following were compared: (1) no show and cancel frequency; (2) patient visit duration; (3) frequency of patient phone calls to clinic between visits; and (4) relationships of demographic factors and diagnoses of neurocognitive disorders to the rates of cancels and no shows. Methods: Data was analyzed with tabulation of demographics; two-tailed t-test analysis of visit length for both new visits and follow up visits; regression analysis of no-show and cancel rates for visits; and two tailed t-test of number of phone calls made to clinic nursing staff between appointments. Results: There was no significant difference in the rate of no-show/cancel for visits between the two years of the study. In 2019 the rate was 23.66% and in 2020 the rate was 26.44% (p=0.61). Additionally, there was no significant difference in the length of visits between the two years. In 2019 the average visit length was 28.76 +/-8.51 minutes and in 2020 the average visit length was 25.91 +/- 11.00 minutes (p=0.05). Regression modeling did suggest that age had a significant effect on length of visit. For the year 2020, phone visits were predicted to be 9.67 minutes shorter than telehealth visits (p

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