PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Harsha Sanaka AU - Rajat Garg AU - Vidhi Patel AU - John McMichael AU - Carole Macaron TI - Temporal trends and disparities in gastroenterology care use before, during, and after COVID-19 lockdown AID - 10.1136/jim-2022-002398 DP - 2022 Aug 29 TA - Journal of Investigative Medicine PG - jim-2022-002398 4099 - http://hw-f5-jim.highwire.org/content/early/2022/08/29/jim-2022-002398.short 4100 - http://hw-f5-jim.highwire.org/content/early/2022/08/29/jim-2022-002398.full AB - Socioeconomic disparities adversely affected healthcare use during COVID-19 lockdown. However, trends in these disparities post lockdown are unknown. Therefore, our aim was to study temporal trends and factors associated with gastroenterology healthcare access and disparities during and after COVID-19 lockdown. This cohort study consisted of patients receiving outpatient care in the Cleveland Clinic gastroenterology department between March 2020 and June 2020 and corresponding time periods in 2019 and 2021. Patient demographics and socioeconomic factors were extracted and analyzed. There were 47,031 patients (mean age 56.3±17.6 years, 61.9% female and 76.4% white) included. Patients ≥65 years sought healthcare less frequently during and after the lockdown (40.1% vs 34.8% vs 35.2% in 2019, 2020, and 2021 respectively). Missed visits (4.2% vs 10% vs 10.4%), tobacco (11.4% vs 15.9% vs 16.1%), alcohol (38.6% vs 45.5% vs 50.9%), and illicit drug use (3.5% vs 5.8% vs 10.7%) have steadily increased during and after the lockdown compared with prepandemic levels. Factors associated with reduced telehealth use were black race (OR 0.89, 95% CI 0.81 to 0.99), Hispanic race (OR 0.63, 95% CI 0.51 to 0.77)), Medicaid/other public insurance (OR 0.87, 95% CI 0.79 to 0.95)), unemployed status (OR 0.85, 95% CI 0.79 to 0.92)), and non-English/Spanish speakers (OR 0.66, 95% CI 0.46 to 0.94)). In conclusion, socioeconomic and ethnic disparities persist in healthcare use even a year after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. There is an alarming increase in missed visits and substance abuse. Therefore, efforts should be targeted on improving healthcare access for these aforementioned vulnerable groups.Data are available upon reasonable request. Deidentified data can be shared with the permission of institution upon request.