JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Access to specialty care remains a major challenge in the Canadian healthcare system. eConsult services allow primary care providers to seek specialist advice often without needing the patient to go for a face to face consultation. It improves overall access to specialists and referral process using an electronic care consultation service in urban and rural primary care clinics. This paper describes our preliminary results of a pilot study with an eConsult across three regions in the province of Quebec, Canada.

Objective:

The main objective of this pilot project is to provide a one year snapshot of the implementation of eConsult Quebec Service in rural and urban primary care clinics to improve access to care and specialty-referral process for primary care providers (PCPs).

Methods:

We established an eConsult service that covers urban and rural communities in three regions of Quebec. We conducted a quantitative analysis of all eConsult cases submitted from July 4, 2017 to December 8, 2018.

Results:

For over a year, 1016 eConsults have been generated during the course of this study. 97 PCPs submitted requests to 22 specialty groups and answered by 40 different specialists. The most popular specialty was internal medicine (22%, N=224). Overall, 63% of completed cases did not require a face-to-face visit. PCPs rated the service as being of high or very high value for themselves in 98% of cases.

Conclusions:

The preliminary data highlights the success of the implementation of the eConsult Quebec Service across 6 primary care clinics. The eConsult platform proves effective, efficient, and well received by both patients and physicians. If used more widely, eConsult could help reducing wait times significantly. Recently the Ministry of Health and Social Services of Quebec has identified as a top priority developing a strategic plan to scale eConsult throughout other regions of the province.