General practitioners’ perceptions of whether teleconsultations reduce the number of face-to-face visits in the catalan public primary care system: retrospective cross-sectional study

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• dc.contributor.author López Seguí, Francesc, 1991-
• dc.contributor.author Vidal Alaball, Josep
• dc.contributor.author Sagarra Castro, Marta
• dc.contributor.author García-Altés, Anna
• dc.contributor.author García Cuyàs, Francesc
• dc.date.accessioned 2021-03-16T08:21:21Z
• dc.date.available 2021-03-16T08:21:21Z
• dc.date.issued 2020
• dc.description.abstract Background: eConsulta is a teleconsultation service involving general practitioners (GPs) and patients. It is part of the information system belonging to Catalonia’s primary care service. It has been in operation since the end of 2015 in conjunction with face-to-face consultations with Primary Care Teams as one of the services offered in the patient’s Personal Health Folder. Objective: This study aimed to assess the ability of using eConsulta to reduce the number of face-to-face visits to Primary Care Teams. Methods: Using 13 categories proposed by the researchers, 18 GPs from the Central Catalonia Health Region retrospectively classified 2268 cases managed with eConsulta and indicated whether, in their opinion, the teleconsultations reduced the number of face-to-face visits. Results: There was broad consensus among the GPs that eConsulta has the potential to resolve patient queries for every type of consultation. eConsulta avoided the need for a face-to-face visit in 87.9% of cases. In addition, the GPs reported that the ease of access increased the demand for health care support in 27.7% of cases; otherwise, the patient would not have initiated the queries. Therefore, based on the equation (88% x [1-28%]), eConsulta could replace 63%-88% of conventional appointments. The most frequent uses of the teleconsultation service were for management of test results (35.2%), medical enquiries (16.0%), and the management of repeat prescriptions (12.2%). On average, the teleconsultations consisted of a mean 1.57 messages (SD 0.54 messages); 45.9% (1040/2268) of the teleconsultations consisted of 1 message, and the majority of the remaining teleconsultations consisted of 2-5 interactions. The patient initiated 60.0% (1361/2268) of the teleconsultations. Conclusions: Based on the GPs’ perceptions, eConsulta could replace 63%-88% of conventional appointments. Therefore, asynchronous teleconsultations between practitioners and patients in primary care could avoid interactions that have limited added clinical value.
• dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
• dc.identifier.citation López Seguí F, Vidal-Alaball J, Sagarra Castro M, García-Altés A, García Cuyàs F. General practitioners’ perceptions of whether teleconsultations reduce the number of face-to-face visits in the catalan public primary care system: retrospective cross-sectional study. J Med Internet Res. 2020 Mar 16;22(3):e14478. DOI: 10.2196/14478
• dc.identifier.doi http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/14478
• dc.identifier.issn 1438-8871
• dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10230/46790
• dc.language.iso eng
• dc.publisher JMIR Publications
• dc.relation.ispartof J Med Internet Res. 2020 Mar 16;22(3):e14478
• dc.rights © Francesc López Seguí, Josep Vidal-Alaball, Marta Sagarra Castro, Anna García-Altés, Francesc García Cuyàs. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 16.03.2020. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://www.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
• dc.rights.accessRights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
• dc.rights.uri https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• dc.subject.keyword Telemedicine
• dc.subject.keyword Remote consultation
• dc.subject.keyword Primary care
• dc.subject.keyword General practitioners
• dc.title General practitioners’ perceptions of whether teleconsultations reduce the number of face-to-face visits in the catalan public primary care system: retrospective cross-sectional study
• dc.type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
• dc.type.version info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion