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Exploring factors of uneven use of telehealth among outpatient pharmacy clinics during COVID-19: A multi-method study()
BACKGROUND: To enable services to be provided at a distance during the COVID-19 pandemic, outpatient pharmacy services in Australia underwent near-immediate reform by moving to telehealth, including telephone and video consults. OBJECTIVE: To investigate how telehealth was used in a metropolitan out...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Elsevier Inc.
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8828293/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35183460 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sapharm.2022.02.003 |
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author | Thomas, Emma E de Camargo Catapan, Soraia Haydon, Helen M Barras, Michael Snoswell, Centaine |
author_facet | Thomas, Emma E de Camargo Catapan, Soraia Haydon, Helen M Barras, Michael Snoswell, Centaine |
author_sort | Thomas, Emma E |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: To enable services to be provided at a distance during the COVID-19 pandemic, outpatient pharmacy services in Australia underwent near-immediate reform by moving to telehealth, including telephone and video consults. OBJECTIVE: To investigate how telehealth was used in a metropolitan outpatient pharmacy setting before and after the start of the COVID-19 restrictions and the various influences on the uptake of phone and video modalities. METHODS: A multi-methods approach was used including: (1) quantifying administrative activity data between July 2019 to December 2020 and, (2) semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders (n = 34). RESULTS: Activity data: Between July 2019 to December 2020 16,377 outpatient pharmacy consults were provided. Of these, 13,543 (83%) were provided in-person, 2,608 (16%) by telephone and 226 (1.4%) by video consult. COVID-19 impacted how these services were provided with telephone activity more than four-times higher in April 2020 than March 2020 and slight increases in video consults. Pharmacists have heavily favoured using the telephone despite the recommendation that video consults be used as the primary mode of contact and that telephone only be used when a video consult was not possible. As soon as COVID-19 restrictions eased, clinicians gradually returned to in-person appointments, maintaining some use of telephone and very limited use of video consult. Semi-structured interviews: Whilst clinicians recognised the potential benefits of video consults, challenges to routine use included the additional administrative and planning work required pre-consult, perceptions that patients were unable to use the technology, and the belief that in-person care was ‘better’ and that the telephone was easier. CONCLUSION: Organisational strategies that encouraged the use of video over telephone (e.g. through financial incentives) did not appear to influence clinicians’ choice of care modality. Implementation studies are required to co-develop solutions to embed telehealth options into outpatient pharmacy settings that provide the best experience for both patients and clinicians. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8828293 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Elsevier Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-88282932022-02-10 Exploring factors of uneven use of telehealth among outpatient pharmacy clinics during COVID-19: A multi-method study() Thomas, Emma E de Camargo Catapan, Soraia Haydon, Helen M Barras, Michael Snoswell, Centaine Res Social Adm Pharm Article BACKGROUND: To enable services to be provided at a distance during the COVID-19 pandemic, outpatient pharmacy services in Australia underwent near-immediate reform by moving to telehealth, including telephone and video consults. OBJECTIVE: To investigate how telehealth was used in a metropolitan outpatient pharmacy setting before and after the start of the COVID-19 restrictions and the various influences on the uptake of phone and video modalities. METHODS: A multi-methods approach was used including: (1) quantifying administrative activity data between July 2019 to December 2020 and, (2) semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders (n = 34). RESULTS: Activity data: Between July 2019 to December 2020 16,377 outpatient pharmacy consults were provided. Of these, 13,543 (83%) were provided in-person, 2,608 (16%) by telephone and 226 (1.4%) by video consult. COVID-19 impacted how these services were provided with telephone activity more than four-times higher in April 2020 than March 2020 and slight increases in video consults. Pharmacists have heavily favoured using the telephone despite the recommendation that video consults be used as the primary mode of contact and that telephone only be used when a video consult was not possible. As soon as COVID-19 restrictions eased, clinicians gradually returned to in-person appointments, maintaining some use of telephone and very limited use of video consult. Semi-structured interviews: Whilst clinicians recognised the potential benefits of video consults, challenges to routine use included the additional administrative and planning work required pre-consult, perceptions that patients were unable to use the technology, and the belief that in-person care was ‘better’ and that the telephone was easier. CONCLUSION: Organisational strategies that encouraged the use of video over telephone (e.g. through financial incentives) did not appear to influence clinicians’ choice of care modality. Implementation studies are required to co-develop solutions to embed telehealth options into outpatient pharmacy settings that provide the best experience for both patients and clinicians. Elsevier Inc. 2022-09 2022-02-09 /pmc/articles/PMC8828293/ /pubmed/35183460 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sapharm.2022.02.003 Text en © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. |
spellingShingle | Article Thomas, Emma E de Camargo Catapan, Soraia Haydon, Helen M Barras, Michael Snoswell, Centaine Exploring factors of uneven use of telehealth among outpatient pharmacy clinics during COVID-19: A multi-method study() |
title | Exploring factors of uneven use of telehealth among outpatient pharmacy clinics during COVID-19: A multi-method study() |
title_full | Exploring factors of uneven use of telehealth among outpatient pharmacy clinics during COVID-19: A multi-method study() |
title_fullStr | Exploring factors of uneven use of telehealth among outpatient pharmacy clinics during COVID-19: A multi-method study() |
title_full_unstemmed | Exploring factors of uneven use of telehealth among outpatient pharmacy clinics during COVID-19: A multi-method study() |
title_short | Exploring factors of uneven use of telehealth among outpatient pharmacy clinics during COVID-19: A multi-method study() |
title_sort | exploring factors of uneven use of telehealth among outpatient pharmacy clinics during covid-19: a multi-method study() |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8828293/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35183460 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sapharm.2022.02.003 |
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