Telephone Consultations in General Practice: Evidence-Based Review

Abstract

The rewards of telemedicine include the possibility of patient observation, diagnosis, treatment and monitoring at a distance. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of teleconsultation increased, aiming at avoiding unnecessary travelling and disease spreading. This work aimed at evaluating the existing evidence regarding teleconsultation and its health outcomes in the Primary Care population, including in the acute setting, through a systematic research in evidence-based medicine databases of studies evaluating teleconsultation in Primary Care. Two systematic reviews were included. The first one showed that telephonic consultations are an appropriate alternative in some settings, reducing workload in clinical practice. The second one revealed that telemedicine is both an effective and cost-effective intervention. Considering the limited number of studies on this subject and their limitations, a B-level SORT strength of recommendation was attributed.