Therefore, the cost of the ENT specialist's time was about the same, regardless of mode of consultation, and was excluded.
The use of telemedicine was identified as a possible solution to overcome local workforce limitations and a mode of consultation that suited pain medicine.
Home visits would have been these service users' preferred mode of consultation; alternatively, it was suggested that out-of-hours treatment centres should provide transport so that they may attend.
We found that there were substantial differences in the proportion of certain conditions diagnosed in each group, which we suspect was mainly because subjects were sorted according to mode of consultations rather than actual clinical conditions.
The solution is based on five principles, namely: understand the access demand on the practice clear the backlog of appointments review the appointment system develop contingency plans widen the mode of patient consultation.
This preparation may have disturbed the delicate balance of power and authority in the consultation, however, and generated difficulties for patients so that they moved back to their usual mode of consulting.
For example, models involving the use of communication equipment are commonly called "telehealth" and yet this term may refer to models with different modes of delivery including rheumatologist consultation provided through videoconferencing with the patient at the family physician's office [ 11– 13], through Internet and e-mails [ 14], or through telephone follow-up [ 15].
It should be noted that our accompanying qualitative study 27 suggests that over the trial, clinicians found face-to-face communication with patients was not necessary to support BP telemonitoring and that they substituted some of these forms of consultation with other modes of communication: mainly telephone and on two occasions email.
Examples include applications using synchronous video-conferencing as the most common mode of communication, and consultation and diagnosis as the most common function [ 9].
