The Use of Electronic Consultations in Outpatient Surgery Clinics: Synthesized Narrative Review

Electronic consultations (eConsults) are an increasingly used form of telemedicine that allows a nonspecialist clinician to seek specialist advice remotely without direct patient-specialist communication. Surgical clinics may see benefits from such forms of communication but face challenges with the need for intervention planning.

We aimed to use the Quadruple Aim Framework to integrate published knowledge of surgical outpatient eConsults with regard to efficacy, safety, limitations, and evolving use in the era of COVID-19.

We systematically searched for relevant studies across four databases (Ovid MEDLINE, Embase, Scopus, and Web of Science) on November 4, 2021, with the following inclusion criteria: English language, published in the past 10 years, and data on the outcomes of outpatient surgical eConsults.

A total of 363 studies were screened for eligibility, of which 33 (9.1%) were included. Most of the included studies were from the United States (23/33, 70%) and Canada (7/33, 21%), with a predominant multidisciplinary focus (9/33, 27%). Most were retrospective audits (16/33, 48%), with 15% (5/33) of the studies having a prospective component.

The surgical eConsult studies indicated a possible benefit for population health, promising safety results, enhanced patient and clinician experience, and cost savings compared with the traditional face-to-face surgical referral pathway. Their use appeared to be more favorable in some surgical subspecialties, and the overall efficacy was similar to that of medical subspecialties. Limited data on their long-term safety and use during the COVID-19 pandemic were identified, and this should be the focus of future research.