Doha: Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) said that virtual medical consultation was provided to over 600 thousand patients through 2022 and to over 2.4 million patients since the service was launched during the Covid-19 pandemic.
PHCC affirmed that the success of virtual medical consultation service in its health centers has exceeded expectations, and therefore, it service will continue in order to provide access to high-quality health care, and to re-dispense medicines without physical visit to the health center.
During the year 2022, about 435,000 patients were able to book virtual appointments with their family doctor to obtain general health advice, while other services such as mother and child health, nutrition, health educator, smoking cessation, and even physiotherapy saw a high turnout of patients through virtual medical consultations, PHCC said.
The Executive Director of the Operations Department at PHCC, Dr. Samia Al Abdullah (pictured) said that after the initial spike in the number of virtual consultations provided to more than one million patients during 2020 as a result of Covid-19, levels of demand for services have largely stabilized in all medical specialties, and the demand for virtual consultations has significantly improved.
PHCC is currently focusing on enhancing the quality of service access to encourage community members to turn to medical consultations via voice and video calls, in a way that ensures the continuity of patient's access to an effective and safe experience and better health outcomes, Dr. Al Abdullah pointed in press remarks on Sunday.
She stressed that patients' positive feedback, along with improving their access to virtual care, contributed to highlighting the importance of including virtual health services in the health care system in the future, in addition to giving patients the option to obtain face-to-face medical consultation with a doctor across all primary health care services when needed.
