Telecardiology: Supporting The Decision-Making Process In General Practice. Journal Of Telemedicine - Evaluation

Evaluation
Following a study period of 18 months, we distributed a questionnaire to all participating GPs asking them to define the use and grade the quality of the service, as well as to consider and grade any benefits the service offered their daily practice (Appendix 1). During the study every call was monitored and all data pertaining to clinical assessment, diagnosis, referral
intention, course of suggested patient management and ECG registration were documented. Study parameters included: service efficiency, accessibility, change of referral patterns, filtering and priority grading of clinical referrals, response time to acute situations and costbenefit implications. An intention-to-treat analysis was performed. The analysis group included all consultations carried out throughout the study. A secondary analysis was carried out correlating patient symptoms as
recorded at the time of transtelephonic consultation with associatedE CG disorders. Following teleconsultation, we prioritized referrals to outpatient clinics, which were reorganized to meet specific demand for assessments. We divided outpatient
clinics into arrhythmia (palpitation), ischaemia (chest pain), risk factor stratification/secondary prevention clinics, and clinics for the investigation of cardiac failure and murmurs. Appointments were filtered based broadly on teleconsultation results and appointments were made on-line following teleconsultation.