Telehealth gets a tick from majority of patients

Around 60% of patients who have participated in a telehealth consultation have rated the experience as being just as good or better than in-person consultations.

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It’s the day’s COVID-19 news in one convenient post. Email bianca@biancanogrady.com with any tips, comments or feedback.

17 September

• Around 60% of telehealth patients rate experience as good as or better than traditional consults.
• COVID-19-infected cat owners could pose a health risk to their pets.
• Latest confirmed COVID-19 infection numbers from around Australia.

• Around 60% of patients who have participated in a telehealth consultation during the COVID-19 pandemic have rated the experience as being just as good or better than in-person consultations, Australian researchers have found.
  A non-peer-reviewed paper published on the preprint server MedRxiv reported the outcomes of a national cross-sectional community survey of 1369 individuals, 45% of whom reported making use of telehealth services during the pandemic.
  Overall, 62% of those who used telehealth rated the experience as being just as good or better than traditional face-to-face consultations, and on average respondents rated telehealth as moderately to very useful for medical appointments during the pandemic.
  “This is encouraging considering that community transmission of COVID-19 across Australia may continue to persist for some time,” the study’s authors wrote.
  However just over one-third felt the telehealth appointment was worse than an in-person consultation, and they also rated the usefulness of telehealth after the pandemic is over as being significantly lower. The authors looked at factors that were associated with individuals having a poorer experience of telehealth, and found this was more common in men, patients with a history of both depression and anxiety. The reasons for rating it as poor compared to in-person consultation included communication not being as effective because of lack of visual cues, body language and eye contact, as well limitations with technology, issues obtaining prescriptions and pathology, and reduced confidence in the doctor.
  The study also found that patients who made use of telehealth were more likely to be older, female, with higher levels of education and a greater prevalence of chronic health conditions and poorer self-reported general health.
• Beware, COVID-19-positive cat owners: there’s a risk you can transmit your infection to your cat. A paper published in Emerging Infectious Diseases has reported on six cases of possible human-to-moggy transmission of COVID-19, with one case finding the identical viral genome in the cat and its human.
  The study tested 50 cats from households with a known case of COVID-19, six of which tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Consistent with previous studies of feline infection, the cats were all asymptomatic or had only subclinical symptoms.
  The authors noted that while feline-to-human transmission was theoretically possible, they found no evidence of it in this study.
• Here are the latest confirmed COVID-19 infection numbers from around Australia, to 9pm Wednesday:
  National – 26,779, with 824 deaths
  ACT – 113 (0)
  NSW – 4185 (10)
  NT – 33 (0)
  QLD – 1149 (0)
  SA – 466 (0)
  TAS – 230 (0)
  VIC – 19,943 (42)
  WA – 660 (1)