Distance, access and equity: a cross-sectional geospatial analysis of disparities in access to primary care for French-only speakers in Ottawa, Ontario.

BACKGROUND: Although language concordance between patients and primary care physicians results in better quality of care and health outcomes, little research has explored inequities in travel burden to access primary care people of linguistic minority groups in Canada. We sought to investigate the travel burden of language-concordant primary care among people who speak French but not English (French-only speakers) and the general public in Ottawa, Ontario, and any inequities in access across language groups and neighbourhood ruralities. METHODS: Using a novel computational method, we estimated travel burden to language-concordant primary care for the general population and French-only speakers in Ottawa. We used language and population data from Statistics Canada's 2016 Census, neighbourhood demographics from the Ottawa Neighbourhood Study, and collected the main practice location and language of primary care physicians from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. We measured travel burden using Valhalla, an open-source road-network analysis platform. RESULTS: We included data from 869 primary care physicians and 916 855 patients. Overall, French-only speakers faced greater travel burdens than the general population to access language-concordant primary care. Median differences in travel burden were statistically significant but small (median difference in drive time 0.61 min, p < 0.001, interquartile range 0.26-1.17 min), but inequities in travel burden between groups were larger among people living in rural neighbourhoods. INTERPRETATION: French-only speakers in Ottawa face modest - but statistically significant - overall inequities in travel burden when accessing primary care, compared with the general population, and higher inequities in specific neighbourhoods. Our results are of interest to policy-makers and health system planners, and our methods can be replicated and used as comparative benchmarks to quantify access disparities for other services and regions across Canada.

Clinical and economic impact of a community-based, hybrid model of in-person and virtual care in a Canadian rural setting: a cross-sectional population-based comparative study.

OBJECTIVES: To determine the clinical and economic impact of a community-based, hybrid model of in-person and virtual care by comparing health-system performance of the rural jurisdiction where this model was implemented with neighbouring jurisdictions without such a model and the broader regional health system. DESIGN: A cross-sectional comparative study. SETTING: Ontario, Canada, with a focus on three largely rural public health units from 1 April 2018 until 31 March 2021. PARTICIPANTS: All residents of Ontario, Canada under the age of 105 eligible for the Ontario Health Insurance Plan during the study period. INTERVENTIONS: An innovative, community-based, hybrid model of in-person and virtual care, the Virtual Triage and Assessment Centre (VTAC), was implemented in Renfrew County, Ontario on 27 March 2020. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Primary outcome was a change in emergency department (ED) visits anywhere in Ontario, secondary outcomes included changes in hospitalisations and health-system costs, using per cent changes in mean monthly values of linked health-system administrative data for 2 years preimplementation and 1 year postimplementation. RESULTS: Renfrew County saw larger declines in ED visits (-34.4%, 95% CI -41.9% to -26.0%) and hospitalisations (-11.1%, 95% CI -19.7% to -1.5%) and slower growth in health-system costs than other rural regions studied. VTAC patients' low-acuity ED visits decreased by -32.9%, high-acuity visits increased by 8.2%, and hospitalisations increased by 30.0%. CONCLUSION: After implementing VTAC, Renfrew County saw reduced ED visits and hospitalisations and slower health-system cost growth compared with neighbouring rural jurisdictions. VTAC patients experienced reduced unnecessary ED visits and increased appropriate care. Community-based, hybrid models of in-person and virtual care may reduce the burden on emergency and hospital services in rural, remote and underserved regions. Further study is required to evaluate potential for scale and spread.