{"id":23261,"date":"2026-02-09T11:27:58","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T16:27:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ices.on.ca\/?post_type=journal_article&#038;p=23261"},"modified":"2026-02-17T11:32:51","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T16:32:51","slug":"patterns-of-specialist-healthcare-delivery-among-inflammatory-bowel-disease-patients-in-response-to-the-covid-19-pandemic-in-ontario","status":"publish","type":"journal_article","link":"https:\/\/www.ices.on.ca\/fr\/publications\/journal-articles\/patterns-of-specialist-healthcare-delivery-among-inflammatory-bowel-disease-patients-in-response-to-the-covid-19-pandemic-in-ontario\/","title":{"rendered":"Patterns of specialist healthcare delivery among inflammatory bowel disease patients in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario: a population-based study"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Background<\/strong> \u2014 Access to inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) specialist care is a predictor of health outcomes. We sought to characterize the impact of the pandemic on patterns of IBD healthcare delivery and whether it compromised overall access to care.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Methods<\/strong> \u2014 We identified adults with an IBD diagnosis residing in Ontario between 2016 and 2021 using administrative data at ICES. We determined quarterly rates of in-person and virtual IBD specialist visits and stratified that by regions with high and low access to IBD specialists. We stratified our analyses into 3 periods: pre-COVID, immediate COVID, and maintenance COVID. We performed interrupted time series analysis to assess for time trends.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Results<\/strong> \u2014 During the immediate COVID phase, there was a 69% relative quarterly decline in in-person IBD specialist visits with a concurrent 591% relative quarterly rise in rates of virtual visits. Entering the COVID maintenance phase, there was a 7% quarterly relative decline in the rate of in-person visits, and a 7% and 4% quarterly relative increases in the rates of virtual and total IBD specialist visits, respectively. Pre-pandemic, IBD patients residing in regions with high specialist access had a 16% higher rate of visits than those in low-access regions. During the COVID maintenance phase, the disparity was reduced to 12%.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Conclusions<\/strong> \u2014 During the COVID-19 pandemic, the rapid transition from in-person to virtual IBD specialist care led to a slight increase in overall IBD visits. There was also a small decrease in the gap in rates of IBD specialist visits between high- and low-access regions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Background \u2014 Access to inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) specialist care is a predictor of health outcomes. We sought to characterize the impact of the pandemic on patterns of IBD healthcare delivery and whether it compromised overall access to care. Methods \u2014 We identified adults with an IBD diagnosis residing in Ontario between 2016 and 2021 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","migration-helper-automated":[],"migration-manual":[],"topic":[48,62,35],"migration-helper-qa-sample-set":[],"class_list":["post-23261","journal_article","type-journal_article","status-publish","hentry","topic-gastroenterology","topic-health-services-research","topic-public-health"],"acf":{"citation":"Nguyen LJ, Huang V, Habashi P, Gao Y, Tandon P. <em>J Can Assoc Gastroenterol<\/em>. 2026; 9(1): 24-29.","source_url":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/jcag\/gwaf030","ices_scientist":[20863],"site":[6733],"research_program":[6746],"news_release":"","journal_article":"","atlas":"","research_report":"","infographic":"","video":"","downloads":null,"links":null,"sitecore_item_id":"","sitecore_item_name":"","sitecore_field_values":"","previous_url":""},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>ICES | Patterns of specialist healthcare delivery among inflammatory bowel disease patients in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario: a population-based study<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Background \u2014 Access to inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) specialist care is a predictor of health outcomes. We sought to characterize the impact of the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ices.on.ca\/fr\/publications\/journal-articles\/patterns-of-specialist-healthcare-delivery-among-inflammatory-bowel-disease-patients-in-response-to-the-covid-19-pandemic-in-ontario\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"fr_FR\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"ICES | Patterns of specialist healthcare delivery among inflammatory bowel disease patients in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario: a population-based study\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Background \u2014 Access to inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) specialist care is a predictor of health outcomes. 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