Video Consultations in Secondary Care: A report by Edge Health for NHS England and NHS Improvement | September 2021
Outpatient video | edge-health (edgehealth.co.uk)

The report highlights the benefits of video consultations to patients – saving over the year a total of 4.64 million hours (530 years) inpatient travel and in-hospital waiting times and £40m in travel costs and parking charges. As a result, 3 million lost work hours were avoided saving the overall economy £108m in lost productivity. The report estimates fewer journeys to the hospital resulted in 14,200 tonnes of avoided greenhouse gas emissions, and 11 million fewer “single-use” PPE items, such as face masks, were consumed, saving the NHS over £1.1 million. The analysis also found that 1,730 hospital-acquired infections were avoided (not including COVID-19 infections) due to fewer visits to hospital sites.

Great report with lots of synergies with some of the conclusions from Independent Evaluation by Trish Greenhalgh et al on the Scotland work as well as Scottish Government National Public Engagement. The authors conclude just as we did in Scotland that more needs to be done to raise the profile with the public and most likely to be successful as part of a suite of options. I recommend reading it.