Análisis médico-legal de la consulta médica telefónica: riesgos legales profesionales y seguridad del paciente

Abstract

Expansion of communications and information technologies offers a new future outlook in the health system and specifically telemedicine and services of teleassistance or teleconsultation., taking on a fundamental leading role in this area. Teleconsultation mainly aims to reduce unnecessary movement of resources and patients to health centres and hospitals. The most controlled environment for teleconsultation is Emergency Coordination Centres.
This work aims to analyze this attending modality, which sometimes is complementary to interpersonal assistance (follow-up telephone calls) and sometimes is itself resolving. It attempts to place this type of health attention in an adequate frame of security for the patient and for the professional who uses this practice sporadically or frequently. The conclusions which have been reached are that the Medical Telephone Consultation is a medical act which allows us to decrease use of health resources without necessarily decreasing the patient's security or increasing legal risks for professionals. To achieve this, certain safety elements based on standardization of legal risks and its annotation in the patient's clinical history are needed.