Southern Philippines Medical Center Outpatient Department consultation census from June 2020 to March 2021: Policy notes

ABSTRACT

@#When communities were forced into lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments across different countries globally also started to impose new social restrictions. In order to comply with these new rules and to meet the demands of an emerging disease, health facilities modified the structures and processes of health care services. 1 Teleconsultations—or medical consultations wherein patients and health care practitioners are away from each other, connected only by telecommunication devices —took the place of the traditional face-toface (FTF) consultations, especially in the outpatient clinics. The provision of remote clinical services or telemedicine—which frequently involves teleconsultations—has been practiced since the early 1960’s, 2 but its utilization has grown exponentially ever since this pandemic started. 3-5 A few studies have demonstrated a significant reduction, from to 60 to 80%, in in-person outpatient visits and a four-fold increase in telehealth outpatient visits in the United States during the early days of the pandemic. 6 7 Similarly, across Asia-Pacific countries, there has been a surge of activity in telemedicine platforms since the identification of the COVID-19 virus in January 2020. 8 In the Philippines, for example, a subscription-based teleconsultation service called KonsultaMD registered a 450% increase in the number of teleconsultations in April 2020. 9 Medgate, one of the country’s leading international telemedicine providers, reported a 170% increase in teleconsultations in 2020. 10 11 The aim of this article is to recommend policies for the delivery and reporting of outpatient care using telemedicine in a tertiary hospital.