Accepted for/Published in: Interactive Journal of Medical Research
Date Submitted: Dec 31, 2021
Date Accepted: Mar 29, 2022
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Video-consultation in the Emergency Department: An Assessment of the Potential Benefit for a UK District General Hospital
ABSTRACT
Background:
DGH Emergency department referrals to a tertiary centre depend on information available from a ‘generalist’ clinician in discussion with a specialist team. If there is uncertainty, the lowest risk strategy is often to transfer the patient. Video consultation allowing the specialist team to see and talk to the patient whilst still in the Emergency department could improve decision making about patient transfer.
Objective:
This study assessed the potential benefit of real time video consultation between remote specialist and Emergency department patient across all specialities.
Methods:
Detailed patient data was collected prospectively for 6 months on all patients presenting to a DGH Emergency department who required input from a specialist team in the nearest tertiary centre. These patients were discussed retrospectively with the specialist teams to determine whether video conferencing could have benefited the patient’s management. The logistics for use of videoconferencing were explored.
Results:
18,799 patients were seen in the Emergency department during the study period. 413 referrals were made to the tertiary centre specialist teams. Review of patients transferred indicated 193 might have benefited from video consultation. If the specialist team could be accessed via video conferencing only whilst a senior member was available in hospital (0800-2200hr) then a maximum of only 5 patients per week across all specialities would use the equipment. If 24hr specialist access was available this would increase to 7 patients per week.
Conclusions:
Video consultation between emergency department patient and specialist has limited potential to improve patient management.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.