• Almudena Marco Ibáñez, Isabel Aguilar Palacio, and Carlos Aibar Remón.
• Centro de Salud Casablanca, Servicio Aragonés de Salud, Grupo de Investigación en Servicios Sanitarios (GRISSA), Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria de Aragón (IIS Aragón), Zaragoza, España. Electronic address: amarcoi@salud.aragon.es.
• Aten Primaria. 2024 Apr 1; 56 (4): 102818102818.

ObjectiveTo know the opinion of Aragon primary care physicians about virtual consultation and its impact on the different healthcare quality domains.DesignCross-sectional study through a self-developed survey. Data collection was enabled from April 14th to May 31st, 2023. SITE: Physicians with healthcare duties in primary care in Aragon.ParticipantsSpecialist physicians and resident interns in Family and Community Medicine.MeansurementsJob characteristics, Likert variables assessing virtual consultation as a tool and its impact on healthcare quality domains, identification of advantages and disadvantages, and free answer questions proposing improvement strategies.Results202 responses. 90.1% of participants consider virtual consultation useful, while 67.8% believe that it improves the quality of referrals. The main advantages identified are its contribution to professional enrichment and the integral visión of the patient, and the improvement of communication between the primary and secondary levels of care; the main drawback is the role of Primary Care as an intermediary in patient information. Efficiency and equity were the most highly rated quality domains, with safety being the least valued.ConclusionsVirtual consultation can promote communication and coordination of care, and enhance the primary care resolution capacity. Its success relies on training and time for its use, as well as on reaching a consensus on protocols and to homogenize resource distribution. Nevertheless, there are still opportunities for improvement, mainly in the realm of safety.Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Publicado por Elsevier España S.L.U. All rights reserved.

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