Telephone and E-Mail Consultations During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Tatjana Zdravković, Tatjana Egic

Keywords: covid-19 pandemic, telephone consultations, e-mail consultations, general practice

Aim:

The aim is to determine how much the patients of the Health Center Novi Sad used the telephone and/or e-mail consultation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Method:

The study is a retrospective analysis of data on services provided, recorded in the electronic health record of the patients of the General Medicine Service. The permission to use data from e-mail database was obtained by the Ethics Commission.

Results:

From March to December 2020, 69079 (99.28%) telephone services and 503 (0.72%) e-mail consultation services were recorded. They were used by people aged from 18 to 108, with an average age of 61.33 (SD 15,854). 41224 (59.68%) females and 27865 (40.32%) males sed telephone services. Compared to other age groups, this service was used significantly more (χ2=28,443, p<0,05) by people aged 60-69 (25.84%) and 70-79 (24.12%). The telephone consultation service was used significantly more (χ2=25,226, p<0,05) in April and May. E-mail consultations was used by 503 people, of which 309 (61.43%) were female and 194 (38.57%) were male. There is no statistically significant difference in the frequency of e-mail consultations in relation to age groups, nor in relation to the month of using the service.

Conclusions:

Due to the epidemic of SARS CoV-2 virus, declared in Serbia on March 19, 2020, the service of telephone and/or e-mail consultations was introduced in the Health Center “Novi Sad”. Telephone consultations were mainly used by elderly patients and males. A significantly smaller number of patients used e-mail consultation. Although these services are useful, there is a danger that the doctors do not have full insight into the health condition of patients.

#108