The Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) has facilitated virtual health, seeing more than 600,000 patients in 2022, and over 2.4mn since the service commenced.
As many as 435,000 patients accessed virtual health appointments with their family physicians for general health advice during 2022. Other services such as Mental Health, Maternal and Child Health, Dietetics, Health Educators, Smoking Cessation and even Physiotherapy have experienced strong uptake for virtual health consultations.
Favourable patient perception and ease of accessing the service are contributing factors to the continued uptake and growth of telehealth in 2023. Some of the benefits include eliminating the need to travel to the health centres and reduced waiting time for an appointment.
Dr Samya al-Abdulla, executive director, Operations PHCC, said: “After an initial spike of more than 1mn virtual consultations in 2020 due to Covid-19, utilisation levels have largely stabilised across all specialties. We have observed through adoption of the service that patients’ attitudes towards virtual consultations continue to improve and engagement from PHCC patients has proved to be consistent and ongoing.
“We are focused on enhancing the quality of access to encourage telephone and video consultations in our communities, ensuring that we continue to provide an efficient and safe patient experience with great outcomes.
“The decision to provide virtual healthcare services at the start of the pandemic was vital for continued access to healthcare. However, positive patient feedback and enhanced patient access to care highlights the importance of embedding virtual health services in our healthcare system in addition to provide patients with the choice of face-to-face appointments across all PHCC services.”
Patients can book an appointment for a phone or video consultation by calling 16000 and selecting the PHCC option or by calling 107.