Differences in experiences with episodic virtual care based on language of comfort for healthcare services in New Brunswick, Canada

Communication plays a central role in accessing healthcare, but few studies have investigated how language shapes the full continuum of access, from perceptions of the system to experiences of care. We sought to clarify how preferred language for healthcare services differentiates patterns of episodic virtual care (EVC) use and explored differences in experiences with EVC services based on the language of comfort of those who used eVisitNB in New Brunswick (NB), Canada. We analyzed NB residents aged 18 years and older who reported using eVisitNB in the past year using an online survey from 12/2023 to 2/2025. The survey used complex branching to achieve specificity in the questions being asked and queried on various aspects of the process of healthcare access, from perceptions and care seeking through to experiences of service use. We analysed distributions of respondent characteristics and eVisitNB use using Chi-square tests, and we constructed multivariate logistic regressions to estimate associations between visit experience measures and official language of comfort for healthcare. We analyzed free-text responses when they pertained to language of care. We stratified all analyses by official language of comfort for healthcare. 66.0% of respondents (n = 1,639; 68.0% female) reported their preferred language for healthcare services as English, 24.8% as French, and 9.2% as French or English. Regardless of preferred language, respondents rated perceptions and acceptable uses of eVisitNB similarly, and half reported that eVisitNB could meet their day-to-day health needs. In the past 12-months, participants who reported French as their language of comfort for health services reported the most frequent use. Respondents who prefer French were more likely to report that eVisitNB met their needs (Odds ratio, 95% Confidence interval: 2.00, 1.40–2.87), but this was challenged by free-text survey responses underscoring difficulty for French speakers to access a healthcare provider with a shared language. Findings suggest slight differences in eVisitNB experiences based on NB citizens official language of comfort for healthcare. However, paradoxical findings between quantitative and free-text responses highlight healthcare access inequities in language groups in NB, and underscore ongoing challenges in deploying healthcare technologies that are appropriate for citizens’ language of comfort for healthcare.