RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Frequency of Primary Care Visits for Substance Use in Ontario, Canada
JF The Annals of Family Medicine
JO Ann Fam Med
FD American Academy of Family Physicians
SP 4275
DO 10.1370/afm.21.s1.4275
VO 21
IS Supplement 1
A1 Siu, Colin
A1 Stephenson, Ellen
A1 Christie, Chelsea
A1 Tu, Karen
YR 2023
UL http://www.annfammed.org/content/21/Supplement_1/4275.abstract
AB Context: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to increased stress and anxiety as well as maladaptive coping strategies including substance use.Objective: This study aims to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the frequency of primary care visits for substance use including tobacco, alcohol, and other drug use among primary care patients in Ontario, Canada.Study Design and Analysis: We conducted a longitudinal cohort study of family medicine patients from March 14, 2019, to March 13, 2021. We used generalized linear models to compare the frequency of substance-use related fee and diagnostic codes pre-pandemic and during the pandemic. Logistic regression was used to model the binary outcome of whether a substance-use related visit took place in either period.Setting or Dataset: Patient data was obtained from the University of Toronto Practice-Based Research Network (UTOPIAN) database with over four hundred contributing family physicians.Population Studied: The study population included 234,730 and 240,044 adult family medicine outpatients in the pre-pandemic and pandemic periods, respectively.Intervention/Instrument: The study looked at the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the frequency of visits for substance use; March 14-2019-March 13, 2020 was defined as the pre-pandemic period while March 14, 2020-March 13, 2021 was defined as the pandemic period.Outcome Measures: We used two types of measures to identify patients presenting to family physicians with a substance use-related issue: (1) Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) service fee codes for primary care visits related to substance use and (2) OHIP diagnostic codes for primary care visits related to substance use.Results: Relative to the pre-pandemic period, there were decreases during the pandemic in the proportion of patients who had a primary care visit for tobacco-use related reasons from 1411 to 419 per 100,000 patients, and alcohol-use related reasons from 314 to 274 per 100,000 patients. However, the proportion of patients having a primary care visit for other drug-use related reasons increased from 618 to 717 per 100,000 patients.Conclusions: Substance-use related primary care visits were found to have decreased in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic relative to the year before. Our results, interpreted in a context of increased substance use prevalence during the COVID-19 pandemic, likely represent an unmet need for patients with substance use disorders during the pandemic.