Time for more data surfing! UCHealth’s overall visit volume (including in-person and video visits and scheduled phone visits) have recovered about 80-90% of pre-pandemic levels.
Today, we’re looking at visit volumes among different age groups of patients. Keep in mind, UCHealth is primarily an adult hospital. Our partner, Childrens Hospital of Colorado, sees most of the pediatric population regionally. We do have some pediatric practices, and of course our extensive family medicine primary care practices also see pediatric patients. This will explain the low volume of pediatric visits below. On the other end, only 3.9% of UCHealth patients are over age 85.
So, what happened to visit volume with each of these age groups?
Turns out, the curve for EVERY age group is similar! Green is age 40-65 and about 1/3 (our largest fraction) of our patient population. Fuchsia is 65-85 and our second largest, purple is 18-40, orange is under 18, red is over 85. The curves start at different points, but follow the same trajectories. That divot on the right side is Memorial day, clinics closed, so 4/5 of the weekly volume that week.
Here is the Home telehealth Video Visit volume! Some interesting findings here. You notice that fuchsia and purple switched places, meaning that a much higher proportion of 18-40 year old patients chose Video Visits compared to 65-85 year old patients. All the other curves stayed in their relative positions. Furthermore, EVERY age group had a proportional bump up in video visits, even those over 85! Finally, the video visit curve is falling back, about to 50% of the peak (so far). It will be interesting to track this in the coming month or 2 and see where we end up, after in-person visits are fully ramped up again.
CMIO’s take? Who knows? Another example to show that we are going to bed with a cliff-hanger every night. I wonder what happens next. The good news: I’m feeling good about having a better handle, even after a few short months, of what Covid-19 can throw at us. Ain’t data cool?
