News: Telehealth diagnoses match in-person visit diagnoses in nearly 87% of cases, study finds

Telemedicine diagnosis matched the in-person outpatient visit diagnosis in 86.9% of cases, according to recent research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Network Open.

In the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth utilization increased exponentially—one published estimate pegged the increase in utilization in April 2020 at 20-fold, HealthLeaders reported. A concern associated with this increase in telehealth utilization is the accuracy of telemedicine diagnoses compared to in-person visits.

The recent research examines data collected from more than 2,000 Mayo Clinic patients who had telehealth diagnoses followed by an in-person visit diagnosis for the same clinical concern in the same specialty within 90 days.

The study generated several key data points:

• For ICD-10 conditions, diagnostic agreement between telehealth visits and in-person visits ranged from 64.7% for diseases of the ear and mastoid process to 96.8% for neoplasms.
• In non-primary care specialties, diagnostic agreement between telehealth visits and in-person visits ranged from 77.3% for otorhinolaryngology to 96.0% for psychiatry.
• Diagnostic agreement between telehealth visits and in-person visits was significantly higher for specialty care compared to primary care (88.4% versus 81.3%).
• When an in-person visit diagnosis could be established through clinician opinion only, there was a high level of agreement with diagnoses made in telehealth visits.
• When an in-person visit diagnosis required confirmatory pathology, a physical examination, or neurological testing, there was a lower level of agreement with diagnoses made in telehealth visits.
• Among the 313 (13.1% of the total) cases where there was not agreement between the telehealth diagnosis and the in-person visit diagnosis, 166 cases had the potential for morbidity and 36 of those cases had actual morbidity.
• Among the 313 cases where there was not agreement between the telehealth diagnosis and the in-person visit diagnosis, 30 had the potential for mortality and 3 of those cases had actual mortality.  

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in HealthLeaders. To read the full research in JAMA Network Open, click here.