ArticleDigital health
Access, charge and quality of tele-dermatology e-consults in China: A standardized patients study.
Article in Digital health. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Global, regional, national prevalence, mortality, and disability-adjusted life-years of cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma and trend analysis from 1990 to 2021 and prediction to 2045.Frontiers in oncology · 2025Article
- Global burden and prediction study of cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma from 1990 to 2030: A systematic analysis and comparison with China.Journal of global health · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
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Abstract
Objective: Direct-to-consumer telemedicine is rapidly changing the way that patients seek medical care. This study provided the first report on access, cost and quality of text- and image-based tele-dermatology e-consults, in China. Methods: We adopted the Standardized Patients approach to evaluate the services of tele-dermatology e-consults in two metropolitan cities, that is, Beijing and Hangzhou, in China. We measured quality from four dimensions: service process, diagnosis accuracy, prescription and treatment comprehensiveness, based on China's national clinical guidelines. We performed logistic regressions to investigate factors that were associated with high-quality care. Results: For 114 physicians eligible for inclusion, we succeeded in 87 (76%) validated visits. The median waiting time was 100 minutes (IQR 19-243 minutes) and the median length of consultation was 636 minutes (about 10 hours, IQR 188-1528 minutes). Per visit costs varied from $0 to $38, with a median of $8 (IQR 4-9). Among all, 15% of visits showed high quality in service process, 84% arrived in the correct diagnosis, 24% provided high-quality prescriptions and 71% provided comprehensive treatment. Providing images was associated with high quality in service process (OR 7.22, 95% CI 1.49-34.88). Visits in metropolitan Beijing and on non-work days had better prescription quality than that in metropolitan Hangzhou (OR 6.05, 95% CI 1.75-20.95) and that on workdays (OR 3.75, 95%CI 1.27-11.04), respectively. Conclusions: Tele-dermatology e-consults seem to be easy to access and less expensive in China. However, great efforts are warranted to ensure that service processes and prescriptions adhere to clinical guidelines.
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