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- Title
Gender Differences in Adoption and Frequency of Virtual Primary Care Among Men and Women Veterans.
- Authors
Ferguson, Jacqueline M.; Goldstein, Karen M.; Zullig, Leah L.; Zulman, Donna M.
- Abstract
Background: Women Veterans have unique health care utilization patterns; however, video-based primary care utilization among and between women and men has not been well examined. Methods: In a retrospective cohort study, we calculated gender-stratified video visit adoption (i.e., likelihood) and frequency (i.e., rate of use among users) between April 1, 2020, and March 31, 2022, by demographic and clinical characteristics known to impact health care utilization. Results: Among 5,389,139 Veterans (9.2% women), 32% of women and 18.6% of men had a video-based primary care visit over the 2-year study period. Gender interacted with Veteran characteristics and the likelihood of any video care. Men often had associations stronger in magnitude (both positive and negative) than women, including by age, rurality, history of housing instability, mental health conditions, and marital status. The direction of effect never diverged by gender. A positive association among women always coincided with a positive association among men, and vice versa, across all characteristics assessed. Only the risk ratio for video care use comparing Veterans of Black race with White race was stronger among women. In contrast to the video care adoption differences by gender, we found few differences in the frequency of video-based care by gender. Conclusions: The findings suggest there are fewer disparities by demographic and clinical characteristics in any video care use among women compared with men and little to no disparities in the frequency of video care use by gender. Understanding the variation in video care utilization by gender could help improve acceptance, appropriate utilization, and uptake of video-based visits for all.
- Subjects
MEDICAL care use; MENTAL health; RESEARCH funding; PRIMARY health care; SEX distribution; RETROSPECTIVE studies; DESCRIPTIVE statistics; TELEMEDICINE; PSYCHOLOGY of veterans; LONGITUDINAL method; MEDICAL records; ACQUISITION of data; MARITAL status; HEALTH equity; SOCIODEMOGRAPHIC factors; HOUSING stability
- Publication
Journal of Women's Health (15409996), 2024, Vol 33, Issue 6, p749
- ISSN
1540-9996
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1089/jwh.2023.0781