The Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine, a coalition including hospitals, health systems, healthcare associations and other organizations, found in a recent analysis that the healthcare industry is lacking data on the quality of telemedicine diagnosis.
The Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine launched a review, dubbed the TeleDx project, to understand the current landscape of telemedicine and diagnosis practice as well as patients and clinicians' experiences with virtual care, according to a Sept. 8 news release.
The researchers reviewed 2,597 abstracts and 210 full texts from the past three years, along with blogs, Twitter chats and other secondary sources to understand how telediagnosis affects diagnostic quality and safety.
The group identified a gap in health systems' understanding of telemedicine, as an estimated 10 percent of diagnoses made virtually were incorrect.
"We found that telediagnosis has potential, although there is still much to learn about how virtual diagnosis can be done most effectively," Suz Schrandt, senior patient engagement advisor at SIDM, said in the news release. "We found that many patients like the convenience of telemedicine, but we also need more research into who is being left behind in the process, such as small practices or people without access to high-speed internet."
Here are the hospitals and medical groups that are members of SDIM:
- Advocate Aurora Health (Milwaukee)
- American Medical Group Association (Alexandria, Va.)
- Ballad Health (Johnson City, Tenn.)
- Baystate Health (Springfield, Mass.)
- Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
- Cleveland Clinic
- Geisinger (Danville, Pa.)
- Intermountain Healthcare (Salt Lake City, Utah)
- Johns Hopkins Medicine (Baltimore)
- Medical University of South Carolina (Charleston)
- MedStar Health (Columbia, Md.)
- Nationwide Children’s Hospital (Columbus)
- Northwell Health (New Hyde Park, N.Y.)
- Penn State Health, Milton S. Hershey Medical Center (Hershey, Pa.)
- The Permanente Federation, Kaiser Permanente (Oakland, Calif.)
- UCSF Health (San Francisco)
- University Hospitals (Cleveland)