JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

eConsulta is a teleconsultation service between doctors and patients which is part of Catalonia’s public health system’s IT system. It has been in operation since the end of 2015 as a complement to the face-to-face consultations offered by the territory’s Primary Care Teams (PCTs) as one of the services offered in the Personal Health Folder.

Objective:

evaluate the relationship between the use of eConsulta and the number of face-to-face visits.

Methods:

18 professionals from the Central Catalonia Health Region retrospectively categorized the cases managed via eConsulta (2,268), according to 13 typologies proposed by the authors, and indicated whether, in their opinion, they served to reduce the number of face-to-face visits.

Results:

the most frequent use of the e-consultation was for the management of test results (33%), queries for clinical reasons (17%) and the management of repeat prescriptions (12%). On average the conversations consisted of 1.57 messages (45% were only one message, the rest were conversations of mostly two and up to five interactions), with the patient initiating the majority of said conversations (60%). There was a broad consensus among doctors that eConsulta has a very high capacity to resolve patient queries (avoiding the need for a face-to-face visit in 88% of cases) for every type of consultation.

Conclusions:

the use of eConsulta is strongly associated with the reducing the number of face-to-face visits and is shown as a useful tool to avoid interactions with little added clinical value. Clinical Trial: The study was approved by the Ethical Committee for Clinical Research at the Foundation University Institute for Primary Health Care Research Jordi Gol i Gurina, with registration number P18/023.