Video Consultations in Primary Care Outside Office Hours

Abstract

Background Out-of-hours primary care (OOH-PC) is facing increasing demands and workload with many negative consequences, including longer waiting time and increased risk of treatment delay and safety incidents. During the COVID-19 pandemic, video consultation (VC) was introduced as an alternative to face-to-face contact. We hypothesize that VC contributes to sustainable OOH-PC by changing patient flows, decreasing workload, and reducing waiting time. Objective This study aims to evaluate the use of video in telephone triage in OOH-PC by studying user rate, the effect on contact patterns, and patient characteristics related to receiving a VC. Methods We conducted a register-based study of VC use in OOH-PC, including all Danish residents contacting OOH-PC in the regions of Central Denmark, Southern Denmark, Northern Denmark, and Zealand. The study population will be followed from birth, immigration, or March 1, 2020 (whichever came last), until death, emigration, or December 31, 2021 (whichever comes first). We will use national registers, linking data with the unique personal identification number. We plan to conduct descriptive analyses, calculating the proportion of VC of all teletriage consultations per month during the study period. We plan to use regression models to measure the association between VC and triage outcome and the association between VC and patient characteristics, calculating risk ratios and 95% CIs. Both crude and mutual adjusted risk ratios for patient characteristics will be presented. Results Data analyses started in May 2022. Conclusions A preliminary conclusion will be presented at the conference. Conflicts of Interest None declared.