{"id":23985,"date":"2025-03-13T15:08:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-13T19:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ices.on.ca\/?post_type=journal_article&#038;p=23985"},"modified":"2026-05-12T15:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T19:18:09","slug":"access-to-virtual-physician-care-among-persons-with-dementia-in-urban-and-rural-areas","status":"publish","type":"journal_article","link":"https:\/\/www.ices.on.ca\/fr\/publications\/journal-articles\/access-to-virtual-physician-care-among-persons-with-dementia-in-urban-and-rural-areas\/","title":{"rendered":"Access to virtual physician care among persons with dementia in urban and rural areas: a repeated cross-sectional study"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Background<\/strong> \u2014 During the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual physician visits rapidly increased among community-dwelling older persons living with dementia (PLWD) in Ontario. Rural residents often have less access to medical care compared to their urban counterparts, and it is unclear whether access to virtual care was equitable between PLWD in urban versus rural locations.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Methods<\/strong> \u2014 Using population-based health administrative data and a repeated cross-sectional study design, we identified and described community-dwelling PLWD between March 2020 and August 2022 in Ontario, Canada. Poisson regression was used to calculate rate ratios (RR) and 95% confidence intervals comparing rates of virtual visits between rural and urban PLWD by key physician specialties: family physicians, neurologists and psychiatrists\/geriatricians.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Results<\/strong> \u2014 Of 122,751 PLWD in our cohort, 9.2% (n = 11,304) resided in rural areas. Rural PLWD were slightly younger compared to their urban counterparts (mean age = 81 vs. 82 years; standardized difference = 0.16). There were no differences across areas by sex or income quintile. In adjusted models, rates of virtual visits were significantly lower for rural compared to urban PLWD across all specialties: family physicians (RR = 0.71 [0.69\u20130.73]), neurologists (RR = 0.79 [0.75\u20130.83]) and psychiatrists\/geriatricians (RR = 0.72 [0.68\u20130.76]).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Conclusions<\/strong> \u2014 PLWD in rural areas had significantly lower rates of virtual family physician, neurologist and psychiatrist\/geriatrician visits compared to urban dwellers during the study period. This finding raises important issues regarding access to primary and specialist healthcare services for rural PLWD. Future work should explore barriers to care to improve health care access among PLWD in rural communities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Background \u2014 During the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual physician visits rapidly increased among community-dwelling older persons living with dementia (PLWD) in Ontario. Rural residents often have less access to medical care compared to their urban counterparts, and it is unclear whether access to virtual care was equitable between PLWD in urban versus rural locations. Methods \u2014 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","migration-helper-automated":[],"migration-manual":[],"topic":[41,62,19,28],"migration-helper-qa-sample-set":[],"class_list":["post-23985","journal_article","type-journal_article","status-publish","hentry","topic-brain-diseases","topic-health-services-research","topic-marginalized-populations","topic-primary-care"],"acf":{"citation":"Odugbemi T, Maclagan LC, Li Z, Guan J, Swartz RH, Maxwell CJ, Jaakkimainen L, Bronskill SE. <em>Can J Neurol Sci<\/em>. 2026; 53(1): 86-95. Epub 2025 Mar 13.","source_url":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1017\/cjn.2025.43","ices_scientist":[1354,1322,1283,1159],"site":[6733],"research_program":[6740],"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 v27.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>ICES | Access to virtual physician care among persons with dementia in urban and rural areas: a repeated cross-sectional study<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Background \u2014 During the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual physician visits rapidly increased among community-dwelling older persons living with dementia (PLWD)\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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