BACKGROUND
Many countries have introduced video consultations in primary care both inside and outside office hours. Despite some relational and technical limitations, general practitioners (GP) have reported benefits of video use in the daytime as it provides faster and more flexible access to healthcare. Studies have indicated that video may be specifically valuable in out-of-hours primary care (OOH-PC), but additional knowledge about the added value of video use is needed.
OBJECTIVE
This study aimed to investigate triage GPs’ perspectives on video use in GP-led telephone triage in OOH-PC by exploring their reasons for choosing video use and its effect on triage outcome, decision-making process, communication, and invested time.
METHODS
We conducted a cross-sectional questionnaire study among GPs performing telephone triage in the OOH-PC service in the Central Denmark Region from 5 September 2022 until 21 December 2022. The questionnaire was integrated into the electronic patient registration system as a pop-up window appearing after every third video contact. This setup automatically linked background data on contact, patient, and GP to the questionnaire data.
RESULTS
The most frequent reasons for video use were to assess the severity, to increase the probability of self-care, and to achieve greater certainty in decision-making. In 61.9% of contacts, the triage GPs anticipated that the contact would have resulted in a different triage outcome if video had not been used. Use of video resulted in a downgrading of severity level in 88.3% of cases. Triage GPs evaluated the use of video as positive in terms of their decision-making process, communication, and invested time.
CONCLUSIONS
According to participating triage GPs video appeared to affect triage outcome, mostly by downgrading severity. The participating triage GPs valued the use of video in OOH-PC, specifically in the communication and in the decision-making process.