ABSTRACT
Introduction: Rates of initiation and dose optimization of guideline-directed medical therapy (GDMT) for heart failure patients with reduced ejection fraction are suboptimal nationally. Recently, virtual medicine has been studied as a potential solution to help overcome barriers limiting GDMT optimization. We evaluated GDMT optimization during telehealth visits compared with in-person visits at Parkland Health, a large urban safety-net health system. Method(s): Parkland has a registry of all patients with an ejection fraction <= 40% on transthoracic echocardiography within the last three years. Using this registry data of patients seen in the Parkland cardiology clinic between September 2021 and February 2022, we compared GDMT prescriptions for patients before and after each clinic visit. We defined an optimization event as the initiation of a new class of GDMT, a switch to an angiotensin receptor/neprilysin inhibitor, or an increase in dosage of any class of GDMT. The rise of Omicron variant COVID-19 cases in Dallas led to a nearly universal shift of in-person to virtual visits in December 2021, allowing us to compare GDMT optimization rates between each visit type. Result(s): From 9/12/21 to 12/24/21, there were 147 visits of which 134 (91%) were in-person. Of these in-person visits, 58.2% led to an optimization event. From 12/25/21 to 2/12/22, there were 97 visits of which 84 (89%) were telehealth visits, all conducted by telephone. Of these telehealth visits, 16.1% led to an optimization event (p<0.001). Baseline characteristics of patients from each period were not significantly different (Table 1). Conclusion(s): Our study demonstrated GDMT optimization was significantly lower in telephone visits compared with in-person visits despite each group having similar demographics and medical co-morbidities. This observation should raise concern over increased reliance on telephone-only encounters, especially in urban resource limited populations. (Figure Presented).