• Elaine M Reno, Benjamin H Li, Morgan Eutermoser, Christopher B Davis, Jason S Haukoos, and Bradley D Shy.
• Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, CO, United States of America. Electronic address: Elaine.reno@cuanschutz.edu.
• Am J Emerg Med. 2022 Apr 1; 54: 238241238-241.

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic compelled healthcare systems to rapidly adapt to changing healthcare needs as well as identify ways to reduce COVID transmission. The relationship between pandemic-related trends in emergency department (ED) visits and telehealth urgent care visits have not been studied.MethodsWe performed an interrupted time series analysis to evaluate trends between ED visits and telehealth urgent medical care visits at two urban healthcare system in Colorado. We performed pairwise comparisons between baseline versus each COVID-19 surge and all three surges combined, for both ED and telehealth encounters at each site and used Wilcoxon rank sum test to compare median values.ResultsDuring the study period, 595,350 patient encounters occurred. We saw ED visits decline in correlation with rising telehealth visits during each COVID surge.ConclusionsDuring initial COVID surges, ED visits declined while telehealth visits rose in inverse correlation with falling ED visits, suggesting that some patients shifted their preferred location for clinical care. As EDs cope with future staffing during the ongoing COVID pandemic, telehealth represents an opportunity for emergency physicians and a means to align patients desires for virtual care with ED volumes and staffing.Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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