FierceHealthcare reports:

“Researchers at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Pennsylvania reviewed 5 years of healthcare encounters at a larger primary care practice, including ‘e-visits,’ phone consultations and in-office visits, and discovered that providers that accepted e-visits actually saw a 6% increase in office visits. As a result, physicians spent more time each month seeing patients in person, which led to a 15% decline in new patients, according to the study, which will be published in Management Science.

”For the purposes of the study, e-visits were broadly defined to include patient portals, electronic communication and telemedicine. But researchers say the study unearths a new layer of unintended consequences associated with technology that may not be as beneficial as some have anticipated.”

To read the FierceHealthcare summary story on the study, please hit this link.

To read the study, please hit this link.