Disruptions to In-person Medical Visits Across the U.S. During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evolving Disparities by Medical Specialty and Socioeconomic Status

OBJECTIVES: To investigate how people’s health-seeking behaviors evolve in the COVID-19 pandemic by community and medical service category. STUDY DESIGN: This is a longitudinal study using mobility data from 19 million mobile devices of visits to all types of health facility locations for all U.S. states. METHODS: We examine the variations in weekly in-person medical visits across county, neighborhood and specialty levels. Different regression models are employed for each level to investigate factors that influence the disparities in medical visits. County-level analysis explores associations between county medical visit patterns, political orientation and COVID-19 infection rate. Neighborhood-level analysis focuses on neighborhood socioeconomic compositions as potential determinants of medical visit levels. Specialty-level analysis compares the evolution of visit disruptions in different specialties. RESULTS: A more left-leaning political orientation and a higher local infection rate were associated with larger decreases in in-person medical visits, and these associations became stronger moving from the initial period of stay-at-home orders into the post-lockdown period. Initial reactions were strongest for seniors and those of high socioeconomic status, but this reversed in post-lockdown period where socio-economically disadvantaged communities stabilized at a lower level of medical visits. Neighborhoods with more female and young people exhibited larger decreases in in-person medical visits throughout the initial and post-lockdown periods. The evolution of disruptions diverges across medical specialties, from only short-term disruption in specialties such as dentistry to increasing disruption, as in cardiology. CONCLUSIONS: Given distinct patterns in visit between communities, medical service categories and between different periods in the pandemic, policy makers and providers should concentrate on monitoring patients in disrupted specialties who overlap with the at-risk contexts and socioeconomic factors in future health emergencies.