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Examining GP online consultation in a primary care setting in east midlands, UK
BACKGROUND: Increasing pressure threatens to overwhelm primary care services, affecting the quality of care and their role as gatekeepers to specialised care services. This study investigated healthcare users’ acceptability of – and the effectiveness of – an e-consultation system in primary care ser...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8482740/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34592980 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-021-07039-2 |
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author | Nijhof, Dewy Ingram, Andy Ochieng, Rebecca Roberts, Emma-Jane Poulton, Barnaby Ochieng, Bertha |
author_facet | Nijhof, Dewy Ingram, Andy Ochieng, Rebecca Roberts, Emma-Jane Poulton, Barnaby Ochieng, Bertha |
author_sort | Nijhof, Dewy |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Increasing pressure threatens to overwhelm primary care services, affecting the quality of care and their role as gatekeepers to specialised care services. This study investigated healthcare users’ acceptability of – and the effectiveness of – an e-consultation system in primary care services. METHODS: Seven GP practices in East-Midlands, all of whom use online consultation system participated in the study, with a retrospective review being undertaken of 189 electronic patients’ records (age range of 18–76 years) over 5 months. The focus was on the electronic records of patients who accessed the service for five different conditions identified as presenting common conditions seen by the GPs practices. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS to perform an exploratory data analysis and descriptive statistics. RESULTS: The results showed a positive reception of the online consultation platform, with an average satisfaction score of 4.15 (most likely to recommend score = 5). Given the nature of the conditions, 47.6% of patients had experienced a previous episode of the health condition they were seeking consultation for, and a total of 72% had existing comorbidities. Follow-up activity occurred for 87.3% of patients, 66.1% of which included at least one follow-up visit for the same condition as the initial online consultation. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that online consultation is convenient for patients, and it also has the potential to relieve pressure placed on primary care services. Although a number of challenges were identified, such as patient verification, this study gives insight into – and enhances our understanding of – the use of online GP consultations. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8482740 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-84827402021-09-30 Examining GP online consultation in a primary care setting in east midlands, UK Nijhof, Dewy Ingram, Andy Ochieng, Rebecca Roberts, Emma-Jane Poulton, Barnaby Ochieng, Bertha BMC Health Serv Res Research BACKGROUND: Increasing pressure threatens to overwhelm primary care services, affecting the quality of care and their role as gatekeepers to specialised care services. This study investigated healthcare users’ acceptability of – and the effectiveness of – an e-consultation system in primary care services. METHODS: Seven GP practices in East-Midlands, all of whom use online consultation system participated in the study, with a retrospective review being undertaken of 189 electronic patients’ records (age range of 18–76 years) over 5 months. The focus was on the electronic records of patients who accessed the service for five different conditions identified as presenting common conditions seen by the GPs practices. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS to perform an exploratory data analysis and descriptive statistics. RESULTS: The results showed a positive reception of the online consultation platform, with an average satisfaction score of 4.15 (most likely to recommend score = 5). Given the nature of the conditions, 47.6% of patients had experienced a previous episode of the health condition they were seeking consultation for, and a total of 72% had existing comorbidities. Follow-up activity occurred for 87.3% of patients, 66.1% of which included at least one follow-up visit for the same condition as the initial online consultation. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that online consultation is convenient for patients, and it also has the potential to relieve pressure placed on primary care services. Although a number of challenges were identified, such as patient verification, this study gives insight into – and enhances our understanding of – the use of online GP consultations. BioMed Central 2021-09-30 /pmc/articles/PMC8482740/ /pubmed/34592980 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-021-07039-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Nijhof, Dewy Ingram, Andy Ochieng, Rebecca Roberts, Emma-Jane Poulton, Barnaby Ochieng, Bertha Examining GP online consultation in a primary care setting in east midlands, UK |
title | Examining GP online consultation in a primary care setting in east midlands, UK |
title_full | Examining GP online consultation in a primary care setting in east midlands, UK |
title_fullStr | Examining GP online consultation in a primary care setting in east midlands, UK |
title_full_unstemmed | Examining GP online consultation in a primary care setting in east midlands, UK |
title_short | Examining GP online consultation in a primary care setting in east midlands, UK |
title_sort | examining gp online consultation in a primary care setting in east midlands, uk |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8482740/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34592980 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-021-07039-2 |
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