Community and Hospital Healthcare Use by Adults With and Without Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities in Ontario, Canada, During the First 2 Years of the COVID‐19 Pandemic

TL;DR

This study compares healthcare use among adults with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities in Ontario during the first two years of the pandemic.

Contribution

The study provides new insights into how the pandemic affected healthcare access for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Findings

Healthcare use decreased during the first pandemic year but increased in the second year for both groups.

Virtual physician visits rose significantly, reaching 58.7% in the second year.

Adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities consistently used more healthcare services than those without.

Abstract

This study describes the proportion of Ontario adults with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) who used community‐ and hospital‐based healthcare in the first 2 years of the pandemic compared with the year pre–COVID‐19.

Linked health administrative databases identified 87 341 adults with IDD and also adults without IDD living in Ontario, Canada. For each cohort, counts and proportions of adults who used different types of healthcare services were reported for the pre–COVID‐19 year (16 March 2019 to 14 March 2020) and the first two COVID‐19 years (15 March 2020 to 14 March 2021 and 15 March 2021 to 14 March 2022).

Compared with the year prior to COVID‐19, the proportion of adults with and without IDD who used health services was lower during the first COVID‐19 year, but the likelihood of all types of visits increased during the second year. The likelihood of using homecare and of being hospitalized nearly returned to pre‐pandemic levels. Virtual physician visits increased in each COVID‐19 year from 5.2% prior to the pandemic to 13.0% in year 1 and 58.7% in year 2. For all years, the proportion of adults who used each service type was higher for those with IDD than without IDD.

For adults with and without IDD in Ontario, Canada, during the first two COVID‐19 years healthcare use decreased for all service types, except for virtual physician visits. In the second year, healthcare use increased but did not reach pre–COVID‐19 levels. In all years, adults with IDD were more likely to use services than other adults.

Figures