Safety
Safety was defined according to the proportions of medical abortions that involved one or more significant adverse events. We defined significant adverse events as haemorrhage requiring transfusion, significant infection requiring hospital admission, major surgery, and death. We also examined the incidence of ectopic pregnancy and when it was diagnosed in the care pathway. All patients referred for further diagnostics (e.g. serial βhCG monitoring) but who had no further treatment are included in the ectopic pregnancy group although a proportion of these will be pregnancy of unknown locations (PULs) that includes failed early intrauterine pregnancies. We analysed the proportion of cases where treatment was reported to have occurred at ≥10 weeks’ gestation in the telemedicine-hybrid cohort (this outcome does not apply to the traditional cohort since all gestations were determined by ultrasound scan).