Association between video consultation use and general practitioner and practice characteristics: a cross-sectional survey in Denmark

Background Video consultations (VC) disrupt how general practice provides care and how patients receive it. A step towards understanding the use of VC is to study the association between user-status and general practitioner and practice characteristics.

Aim To study the association between general practitioner and general practice characteristics and VC user-status (users, never users, and former users).

Design & setting An anonymous, web-based, cross-sectional survey was distributed to all 1674 Danish general practices (singlehanded, collaborative, and partnership forms) contracting with and working on a collective agreement with the public funder.

Method Multinomial logistic regression was used to correlate VC user-status and (1) general practice characteristics, and general practitioners' (2a) objective characteristics and (2b) subjective attitudes towards VC and organizational change.

Results The study sample included 416 general practitioners. Users of VC compared to never-users: partnership practices (RRR=0.22; 95% CI 0.06-0.85) and practices with six or more practice staff (RRR=0.05; 95% CI 0.01-0.28) were significantly more likely to be users. The same was found for general practitioners with a high degree of tech savviness (RRR=0.02; 95% CI 0.001-0.17) and openness to organisational change (RRR=0.26; 95% CI 0.08-0.85).

Conclusion Characteristics of general practice and general practitioners are associated with VC user-status (being a user, never user or former user). Future research should use a Difference-in-Difference study design and register data to make causality claims.