Practice-level plans to introduce alternatives to face-to-face consultations (n = 421)a
| Does your practice plan to provide the following as an alternative to face-to-face consultations? | No plans to use this | Tried to in the past, less so now | Plan to sometime in the future | Definitely within next 3 months | Already do this frequently | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Email or electronic messaging (for example, secure messaging via website) n (%) | 169 (53) | 66 (21) | 51 (16) | 14 (4) | 18 (6) | 318 |
| Internet video (for example, Skype™, FaceTime®) n (%) | 273 (86) | 31 (10) | 13 (4) | 1 (0) | 0 | 318 |
| Bookable telephone consultations (not including triage calls or brief messages) n (%) | 30 (10) | 16 (5) | 30 (9) | 31 (10) | 211 (66) | 318 |
↵a Answers were given on a scale from 1 to 5. Practice means rather than medians are shown for ease of presentation, as medians would require intermediate categories. Preliminary analysis showed no important differences in findings presented as means or medians.