Determining if COPD Self-Management Televisit-Based Interventions Are Evaluated among and Equitably Effective Across Diverse Patient Populations to Reduce Acute Care Utilization: A Scoping Review

Topic Importance With telemedicine’s expansion during the COVID-19 pandemic, it became critical to evaluate whether patients have equitable access and capabilities to optimally use televisits for improved COPD outcomes such as reduced hospitalizations. This scoping review evaluated whether televisit-based interventions are evaluated and equitably effective in improving healthcare utilization outcomes among diverse patient populations with COPD. Review Findings Using a systematic search for televisit-based COPD self-management interventions we found 20 studies for inclusion, all but one of which was published prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most (11/20) were ‘good’ quality. The majority (19/20) of studies reported age and gender; few provided race (3/20) or income (1/20) data. The most frequently used televisit-based modalities were in-person plus phone (6/20), video-only (6/20), and phone-only (4/20). Most (12/20) showed a significant reduction in at least one healthcare utilization metric; nine found hospitalization-related reductions. Effective interventions typically used two modalities (e.g., in-person plus televisits) and/or video modality. Summary Most studies failed to report on participants’ race or income leading to a lack of data on equity of interventions’ effectiveness across diverse patient populations. Multi-modality televisit-based interventions, particularly with an in-person component, were most commonly effective; no associations were seen with study quality or size. With the increasing reliance on telemedicine to provide chronic disease care, the lack of data among diverse populations since the COVID-19 pandemic began limits generalizability of these findings for real-world clinical settings. More comprehensive evaluations of televisit-based interventions are needed in the post-pandemic era within and across diverse patient populations.