UPFRONT | From the editor March/April 2022 Volume 27, Number 2 Reader Service Virtual care here to stay I recently attended a webinar titled “The reality of virtual care: Learning from the pandemic.” A reflection on the last two years, this was part of Ontario Health’s Provincial Quality and Safety Patient Rounds. Obviously the popularity and usage of virtual care have increased dramatically since the advent of the pandemic – utilized out of necessity and safety, but also out of ease-of-use for some patients. According to one graph displayed in the presentation, which showed emergency department (ED) visits and percentage overall virtual primary care visits (January 2019-July 2021), there appears to be an inverse associa-tion between the percentage of virtual visits in primary care and the number of emergency department visits. With a graph on-screen, the presenter drew our attention to June of 2021, where the rate of virtual care dipped below 50% and at the same time, the total ED visits rose. “So the idea that people didn’t see their patients, and as a result patients went to the ED more often is not held up by...this data. Future analyses might show a more complex relationship, but I wanted to show that basically, virtual care is more than 50% of primary care visits currently, and so it is deeply embedded in our system – and we need to think about how to use it best,” said presenter Dr. Onil Bhattacharyya, a family physician and the Frigon-Blau Chair in Family Medicine Research at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto. He then posed a question: Is channel management a professional respon-sibility? This was followed by a quote from a patient who said: “I think it’s more of an ethical obligation on both sides to use the most appropriate channel for the most appropriate situation so that the costliest, most resource-intensive, and most humanistic channels are there for the people who really need it.” There were surprises and growing pains for adapting and managing virtual care visits at the start. And of course, being in a profession that generally requires us to visit in-person, it’s still true that virtual care and adoption of new technologies is of growing importance, whether that’s for greater access to care, ways to monitor care, education/self-management support, or even for coordination with other providers. There are still unanswered questions with virtual care and the reality of practice re-design, the resources available, etc., but I encourage you to be earlier adoptors and get ahead of what the future of healthcare looks like. Print and digital subscription inquiries or changes, please contact Anita Madden, Audience Development Manager Tel: (416) 510-5183 Fax: (416) 510-6875 Email: [email protected] Mail: 111 Gordon Baker Rd., Suite 400, Toronto, ON M2H 3R1 EDITOR Jannen Belbeck [email protected] (519) 429-5231 PUBLISHER Christine Livingstone [email protected] (519) 429-5173 ACCOUNT COORDINATOR Trish Ramsay [email protected] (416) 510-6760 MEDIA DESIGNER Alison Keba GROUP PUBLISHER/VP SALES Martin McAnulty [email protected] COO Scott Jamieson [email protected] Published and printed by Annex Business Media, 105 Donly Drive South, Simcoe, ON, Canada N3Y 4N5 Publication Mail Agreement #40065710 ISSN 1488-6952 Annex Privacy Officer [email protected] Tel: 800-668-2384 Chiropractic and Naturopathic Doctor is published six times a year: January/February, March/April, May/June, July/August, September/October, November/December. SUBSCRIPTION RATES Canada – 1 Year $26.00, 2 years $42.00, 3 years $60.00 (HST #867172652RT0001) USA – 1 Year $60.00 (CDN Funds) Occasionally, Chiropractic and Naturopathic Doctor will mail information on behalf of industry-related groups whose products and services we believe may be of interest to you. If you prefer not to receive this information, please contact our circulation department in any of the four ways listed above. No part of the editorial content of this publication may be reprinted without the publisher’s written permission. ©2022 Annex Business Media. All rights reserved. Opinions expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the editor or the publisher. No liability is assumed for errors or omissions. All advertising is subject to the publisher’s approval. Such approval does not imply any endorsement of the products or services advertised. Publisher reserves the right to refuse advertising that does not meet the standards of the publication. Made possible with the support of @CN_Doctor /ChiropracticNaturopathicDoc JANNEN BELBECK, Editor @ChiropracticNaturopathicDoc Use the hashtag #CanadianChiropractor or #CanadianNaturopath (or tag us) for a chance to be featured in a future issue! 4 Chiropractic and Naturopathic Doctor March/April 2022 www.Cndoctor.ca
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