RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Diagnoses per Encounter by Telephone, Televideo, and In-Office Visits
JF The Journal of the American Board of Family
                Medicine
JO J Am Board Fam Med
FD American Board of Family Medicine
SP 491
OP 496
DO 10.3122/jabfm.2022.03.210451
VO 35
IS 3
A1 Daniel Schlegel
A1 Christopher (Kit) Heron
A1 Arthur Berg
A1 Jessica Parascando
A1 Matthew Silvis
YR 2022
UL http://www.jabfm.org/content/35/3/491.abstract
AB Introduction: We sought to determine if there are differences between number of International Classification of Disease-10 (ICD-10) codes per visit before and after COVID-19 when comparing in-office visits and between telemedicine vs in-office visits, toward the goal of determining value of telemedicine visits relative to in-office visits.Methods: We did a chart review study assessing the number of ICD-10 codes noted by providers at a large academic medical institution in 2019 and 2020. Only in-office visits were reviewed in 2019. The focus of analysis was on individual patient visits per visit type; however, a subset of patients who had visits in both 2019 and 2020 were also analyzed. We compared mean number of diagnoses for encounter types using encounter, billing and coding data.Results: We analyzed 211,829 patient encounters. For 2020, 73% were in office. Mean number of diagnoses per encounter for 2019 was 2.65 (in office only), compared with 3.04 in office, 2.76 telephone, and 2.48 televideo for 2020.Discussion: We found an increase in the number of diagnoses addressed during in-office visits from 2019 to 2020. When looking at diagnoses managed per visit, all 3 types of visits had similar complexity. These results may guide future reimbursement policy for telemedicine visits.