Guidelines for the use of the Attend Anywhere Platform for Telecommunications within the Pain Service

Introduction Remote consultation is of growing in importance and gaining popularity in both primary and secondary healthcare settings. Reduced necessity for a physical presence of the patient within the healthcare setting is of particular benefit in the current COVID-19 era. It is also of benefit to a diverse group of patients, for example: those who are geographically distant from the base hospital, those suffering from mobility issues or chronic illness, those who require chaperoning as well as those with limited access to transport. We have developed guidelines for the use of the medical telecommunications platform, Attend Anywhere, which has been utilised across the English and Scottish National Health Services, as well as with the Australian Health service, and is now available in Health Service Executive (HSE) settings. Herein we describe and recommend a process that we have found helpful, and we propose guidelines on how a Health Care Worker (HCW) might consider approaching a virtual consultation when initiating and safely executing a patient encounter on Attend Anywhere, in a secure and efficient manner. The guidelines were created following review of the literature on previous experience by others with this software, as well as recent guidance published by the Irish Medical Council. A proportion of this guidance is transferable to other platforms. Methods We also undertook a short survey of our patients and physicians in Sligo University Hospital, who used Attend Anywhere over a six-week period to gauge their satisfaction levels with the experience., We estimated distance that our patients would have travelled for their appointment had the traditional face-to-face consultation been carried out. We noted whether we considered the medium appropriate for the patient consultations. Results 53 patients took part and satisfaction was rated from satisfied to very satisfied on a 3-point scale for all stakeholders. In addition, we found that remote consultation, when compared to face-to-face consultation, alleviated an average of 144km of unnecessary travel per appointment. Remote consultation was deemed appropriate in all cases and no rescheduled face-to-face appointments were required due to failure of the consultation due to difficulties encountered. Conclusion The authors recommend the implementation of the described guidance, with suggested Checklist, Information leaflet and Consent form, as a means of ensuring the confidentiality of the consultation and to ensure that processes are adhered to that optimise protection for both the patient and the clinician, while reducing the burden of attendance to the healthcare location.