Association between video consultation use and general practitioner and practice characteristics: a cross-sectional survey in Denmark.

Background: Video consultations (VC) disrupt how general practice provides care and how patients receive it. A step towards understanding the use of VC is to study the association between user-status and general practitioner and practice characteristics.

Aim: To study the association between general practitioner and general practice characteristics and VC user-status (users, never users, and former users).

Design & setting: An anonymous, web-based, cross-sectional survey was distributed to all 1674 Danish general practices (singlehanded, collaborative, and partnership forms) contracting with and working on a collective agreement with the public funder.

Method: Multinomial logistic regression was used to correlate VC user-status and (1) general practice characteristics, and general practitioners' (2a) objective characteristics and (2b) subjective attitudes towards VC and organizational change.

Results: The study sample included 416 general practitioners. Users of VC compared to never-users: partnership practices (RRR=0.22; 95% CI 0.06-0.85) and practices with six or more practice staff (RRR=0.05; 95% CI 0.01-0.28) were significantly more likely to be users. The same was found for general practitioners with a high degree of tech savviness (RRR=0.02; 95% CI 0.001-0.17) and openness to organisational change (RRR=0.26; 95% CI 0.08-0.85).

Conclusion: Characteristics of general practice and general practitioners are associated with VC user-status (being a user, never user or former user). Future research should use a Difference-in-Difference study design and register data to make causality claims.