“As the volume of virtual practices grows, most health systems will need to create a hybrid between health-system-employed and vendor-and/or-payer-supplied physicians,” he added. “Finding ways to create similar quality and outcomes will be essential in the evolving digital health infrastructure being developed.”
Charles Teixeira, DO, an infectious disease specialist at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, said that this study highlighted the need to consistently provide high-quality, evidence-based care regardless of the encounter setting.
“It was important to compare the prescribing practices for commonly used medications, especially those as important as antibiotics,” he added. “Overprescribing antibiotics can have a progressive, long-term effect on a community and increase the risk for patients to develop multidrug-resistant bacteria.”
Jeffrey A. Linder, MD, MPH, the chief of general internal medicine and geriatrics in the department of medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, commended the authors for investigating the quality of telehealth.
“The major limitation,” he found, “is that the investigators lumped all ARI visits – including those that are potentially antibiotic appropriate (e.g., otitis media, pharyngitis, sinusitis), those that are non–antibiotic appropriate (e.g., bronchitis, influenza, laryngitis, URI, viral syndrome), and those that are nonspecific symptoms (e.g., cough, congestion, fever, sore throat) – into the same category.”
No clinical information was collected or presented that would enable the reader to tell if these two groups of physicians were evaluating different patient populations or even if they just diagnosed patients differently,” he added.
“Our study did not delve into why we saw the difference,” Dr. Li explained. “Exploring potential reasons further will have important implications for how to optimally deliver care via telehealth.”
All authors and independent experts have disclosed no relevant financial relationships. The study received no financial support.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.