[Telemedicine services associated with higher use of regular primary care in a Swedish region].

Since 2016, a number of companies offering primary care services via chats or video calls have entered the Swedish primary care market. This is the first study to investigate whether these services replace other primary care services or if they induce more care and potentially even increase the workload of traditional caregivers. Using administrative care register data from a Swedish region, we find that the use of telemedicine services is associated with higher use of other primary care services (visits and telephone/mail contacts). Further, telemedicine users visit the emergency room at least as often as other residents. We obtain similar results when using various strategies to account for differences between telemedicine users and non-users. However, we cannot completely rule out that an association between transitory health problems and telemedicine use explains the results.