The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on the continuity of care (COC) for patients with hypertension. Additionally, the factor of whether participants were treated via telemedicine was also considered. This study used the National Health Insurance and Medical Aid claims data of the Republic of Korea between 2019 and 2020. Multivariable regression analysis was performed to identify the differences in the number of visits and the most frequent provider continuity (MFPC) of hypertensive patients before and after the appearance of COVID-19 in Korea. Additional analysis was performed with data that excluded cases of patients who received telemedicine services. A total of 5,791,812 hypertensive patients were included in this study. The MFPC decreased by 0.0031 points after the appearance of COVID-19, and it showed the same decrease even when telemedicine cases were excluded. The number of outpatient clinic visit days decreased by 0.2930 days after the appearance of COVID-19. Without the telemedicine cases, the number of outpatient clinic visit days decreased by 0.3330 days after the appearance of COVID-19. Accordingly, the COVID-19 protocols did not affect hypertension patients' COC but impacted the frequency of their outpatient visits. In other words, with or without telemedicine, the utilization of healthcare was not disrupted, but there was a significant difference in the volume of healthcare use depending on the inclusion of telemedicine cases.
Keywords: continuity of care; most frequent provider continuity; primary care; social distancing; social isolation; telemedicine.