Pediatric acute respiratory tract infections (ARTIs) were a common reason for commercial direct-to-consumer (DTC) telemedicine use before the COVID-19 pandemic, but the factors associated with this use are unknown.
Objective:
To identify child and family factors associated with use of commercial DTC telemedicine for ARTIs in 2018–2019.
Methods:
We performed a retrospective cohort analysis of claims data from the Optum Clinformatics® Data Mart Database. Among children with ARTI visits, we fitted logit models to examine child and family characteristics associated with DTC telemedicine use.
Results:
Of 660,725 children with ARTI visits, 12,944 (2.0%) had ≥1 commercial DTC telemedicine encounter. The odds of DTC telemedicine use were higher for children with age ≥12 years, lower parent educational attainment, higher household income, white non-Hispanic race/ethnicity, and residency in the West South Central census division.
Conclusion:
In 2018–2019, commercial DTC telemedicine use varied with child age, child race/ethnicity parent educational attainment, household income, and geography.
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