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. 2023 Mar 22;4(1):44-47.
doi: 10.1089/tmr.2023.0004. eCollection 2023.

Frequency of Modification of Pharmacological Treatment Is Equivalent for Virtual and In-Person Psychiatric Visits

Amal Mumtaz  1 , Aisha O Adigun  1 , Rif S El-Mallakh  1
Affiliations

Frequency of Modification of Pharmacological Treatment Is Equivalent for Virtual and In-Person Psychiatric Visits

Amal Mumtaz et al. Telemed Rep. .

Abstract

Background: During the coronavirus pandemic there was a rapid adoption of telehealth services in psychiatry, which now accounts for 40% of all visits. There is a dearth of information about the relative efficacy of virtual and in-person psychiatric evaluations.

Methods: We examined the rate of medication changes during virtual and in-person visits as a proxy for the equivalence of clinical decision-making.

Results: A total of 280 visits among 173 patients were evaluated. The majority of these visits were telehealth (224, 80%). There were 96 medication changes among the telehealth visits (42.8%) and 21 among the in-person visits (37.5%) (z = -1.4, p = 0.16).

Conclusion: Clinicians were equally as likely to order a medication change if they saw their patient virtually or in person. This suggests that remote assessments yielded similar conclusions to in-person assessments.

Keywords: medication modification; outcomes; psychiatry; quality; telepsychiatry; virtual visits.

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Conflict of interest statement

R.S.E. has research funding from Sunovion, Roche, Janssen, and the Jesse H. Wright, MD, PhD. Endowment for Mood Disorders Research. He is a speaker for Axsome, Idorsia, Intracellular, Janssen, Lundbeck, Noven, Otsuka, and Sunovion. None of the other authors have any potential conflicts to declare.

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