An online doctor's appointment may miss out on your illness, research shows

A study in the United Kingdom has found that General Physician appointments online or over phone are prone to miss serious illnesses, consequently putting patients at risk.

The study was published in the BMJ Quality and Safety Journal. It reportedly considered data in terms of 95 UK safety incidents between 2020 and 2023 (including from during the Covid pandemic).

Risk of patients being underdiagnosed

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The researchers said that it's not that physicians are at fault. That they rarely make mistakes during clinical examination of the patients. But there remains the risk of a patient to be underdiagnosed.

What are the errors that emerge from virtual/phoner medical appointments?

The researchers noted several errors made in relation to serious health conditions, such as genetic heart disease, sepsis and diabetic foot complications. This, the researchers added, "would likely have been readily diagnosed with an in-person examination".

It added: "Several safety incidents involved clinicians assuming that a diagnosis made on a remote consultation was definitive rather than provisional."

"Especially when subsequent consultations were remote, such errors could become ingrained, leading to diagnostic overshadowing and missed or delayed diagnosis."

The evidence of such errors, however, is anecdotal.

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Even physicians contended that the health conditions are sometimes underplayed during virtual/phoner appointments.

General Physicians during the course of the study noted "poor rapport building" with the patients.

One General Physician was quoted as saying: "I’ve remembered one father that called up. Really didn’t seem to be too concerned."

"And was very much under-playing it and then when I did a video call, you know this child… had intercostal recession… looked really, really poorly. And it was quite scary actually that, you know, you'd had the conversation and if you'd just listened to what dad was saying, actually, you probably wouldn't be concerned.'"

What does it mean?

According to Professor Greenhalgh, chief investigator from the University of Oxford, the vast majority of remote clinical consultations in general practice are "safe".

"When safety incidents happen, organisational pressures and poor communication often play a major role," Professor Greenhalgh said in an official statement.

"This new research has identified more precisely where the risks lie and what measures we can take to reduce risks further."

(With inputs from agencies)