Description

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic launched many healthcare facilities into adopting telehealth into their daily practice to continue giving people a way to access healthcare services. Ideally, telehealth has the potential to be a crucial modality for reaching patients who already have barriers to accessing healthcare services and may allow for higher levels of compliance with their medical care plan. However, not every patient has adapted to this new method for delivering healthcare services. The purpose of this study is to investigate what factors lead to attrition from telehealth services among older adults. Method: A retrospective cohort study was conducted on 32 participants who were enrolled in Westchester’s Telehealth Intervention Program for Seniors (TIPS). These participants were surveyed during the COVID-19 pandemic to assess their intent in joining the program, factors causing them to leave TIPS, and factors that may prompt them to rejoin the program. The collected data and demographic information were then analyzed using SAS 9.4, where a Fisher’s exact test was used to assess for statistical significance. Results: Among the reasons participants were asked to see why they quit the program, the highest factor was due to COVID-19 reasons (56.3%). This was followed by participants preferring to meet in person instead of over the phone (50%), participants no longer being interested in the program (28.1%), and participants feeling like they were healthy enough to not need this service (21.9%). A statistical significance was seen (p-value = 0.03) when comparing COVID-19 vaccination status against the participant’s intent to rejoin TIPS. Discussion: The results of this study suggests that a majority of participants quit utilizing TIPS due to COVID-19 reasons and preferred to utilize healthcare services in person rather than through telehealth. The statistical significance between the two variables further indicates the problem with not being in-person during the COVID-19 pandemic as the reason why participants left the telehealth program. This implies the possible need for better education on the use of technology among older adults to overcome the technological skill barrier for this population to receive access to healthcare services.