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. 2021 Apr;29(2):194-199.
doi: 10.1177/1039856221992634. Epub 2021 Feb 24.

Increased Australian outpatient private practice psychiatric care during the COVID-19 pandemic: usage of new MBS-telehealth item and face-to-face psychiatrist office-based services in Quarter 3, 2020

Jeffrey Cl Looi  1   2 , Stephen Allison  3 , Tarun Bastiampillai  3   4 , William Pring  5   6   7 , Rebecca Reay  1   8 , Stephen R Kisely  9   10
Affiliations

Increased Australian outpatient private practice psychiatric care during the COVID-19 pandemic: usage of new MBS-telehealth item and face-to-face psychiatrist office-based services in Quarter 3, 2020

Jeffrey Cl Looi et al. Australas Psychiatry. 2021 Apr.

Abstract

Objective: The Australian federal government introduced new COVID-19 psychiatrist Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) telehealth items to assist with providing private specialist care. We investigate private psychiatrists' uptake of video and telephone telehealth, as well as total (telehealth and face-to-face) consultations for Quarter 3 (July-September), 2020. We compare these to the same quarter in 2019.

Method: MBS-item service data were extracted for COVID-19-psychiatrist video and telephone telehealth item numbers and compared with Quarter 3 (July-September), 2019, of face-to-face consultations for the whole of Australia.

Results: The number of psychiatry consultations (telehealth and face-to-face) rose during the first wave of the pandemic in Quarter 3, 2020, by 14% compared to Quarter 3, 2019, with telehealth 43% of this total. Face-to-face consultations in Quarter 3, 2020 were only 64% of the comparative number of Quarter 3, 2019 consultations. Most telehealth involved short telephone consultations of ⩽15-30 min. Video consultations comprised 42% of total telehealth provision: these were for new patient assessments and longer consultations. These figures represent increased face-to-face consultation compared to Quarter 2, 2020, with substantial maintenance of telehealth consultations.

Conclusions: Private psychiatrists continued using the new COVID-19 MBS telehealth items for Quarter 3, 2020 to increase the number of patient care contacts in the context of decreased face-to-face consultations compared to 2019, but increased face-to-face consultations compared to Quarter 2, 2020.

Keywords: COVID-19; private practice; psychiatrist; telehealth; telepsychiatry.

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Conflict of interest statement

Disclosure: The authors report no conflict of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Quarter 3 individual psychiatrist MBS item usage by modality and year. Note. MBS-equivalent item numbers on y-axis; percentage of total consultations on x-axis; VideoTele2020: Video telehealth count; TeleTele2020: Telephone telehealth count; F2F2020: Face-to-face consultations for Quarter 3, 2020: (count); F2F 2019: Face-to-face consultations for Quarter 3, 2019 (count).
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Quarter 3, 2020 video versus telephone telehealth. Note. MBS-equivalent item numbers on y-axis; percentage of total consultations on x-axis; VideoTele: Video telehealth consultations; TeleTele: Telephone telehealth consultations.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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