December 4, 20232:00 – 3:00PMCampus Center Hagglund Conference Room |
Anticoagulant Prescription Patterns in Telemedicine vs. In-Person Visits for Atrial Fibrillation: Evidence from a US Teaching Hospital System[Joint work with Shalini Allam, MD (UPMC), Rahul Telang (CMU), Eric Dueweke, MD (UPMC)] As telemedicine emerges as a key component in healthcare delivery, particularly for managing serious conditions like atrial fibrillation (AF), its comparative effectiveness against in-person visits remains insufficiently explored. This study contributes to addressing this gap by examining anticoagulant (AC) prescription patterns in newly diagnosed AF patients, considering both clinical and demographic factors. Using regression and inverse probability of treatment weighting, we analyzed electronic medical record data from outpatient cardiology clinics within a major US academic healthcare system. From January 2020 through April 2023, a total of 16,603 AC-eligible patients had a cardiology follow up appointment after being diagnosed with AF. On average, telemedicine visits were associated with a 5.2 percent lower probability of anticoagulant prescription compared to in-person visits (adjusted risk difference, -0.052; 95% CI, -0.081 to -0.024; P<0.001). This difference persisted across various subgroups, with notable exceptions for clinicians in the top quartile by baseline in-person AC prescription rates, where no significant difference in AC prescriptions was observed between visit types. These findings indicate the need for enhanced educational initiatives for clinicians, emphasizing adherence to AC guidelines in telemedicine settings for newly diagnosed AF patients. |
Zia Hydari is an assistant professor at the Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh (Pitt), where he teaches undergraduate and MBA courses on business platforms, enterprise computing (AI, cloud), and information systems security. Zia's research interests are in the use of technology in healthcare and in cybersecurity. He has published research in Management Science, Annals of Emergency Medicine, and the Communications of the ACM. He has also presented his work at the Conference on Health IT and Analytics, INFORMS CIST, ICIS, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) IT and Digitization conference, and WISE. Before joining Pitt, Zia Hydari received an MS in Computer Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, an MS in Engineering and Management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a PhD in Business Technologies from the Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University. |
