Patient and Family Factors Associated with Use of Telemedicine Visits for Pediatric Acute Respiratory Tract Infections, 2018-2019.

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. To identify child and family factors associated with use of commercial DTC telemedicine for ARTIs in 2018-2019. 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. 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. In 2018-2019, commercial DTC telemedicine use varied with child age, child race/ethnicity parent educational attainment, household income, and geography.