O serviço de teleconsultoria assíncrona na APS: avaliação de uso e fatores associados do Programa Telessaúde Espírito Santo entre 2012 e 2015

Introduction: The few implementation reviews in Brazil shows a small use of telehealth services and more research is required to know its causes. The main goal of this work is to analyze the use rate of the asynchronous teleconsulting service in the Espirito Santo Telehealth Programme from 2012 to 2015, looking to the influence of the different strategies employed to promote its use. Methods: This descriptive study takes into account secondary data of the health professionals registered and the services of teleconsulting and web conferences produced. Results: In this period, 3076 health professionals were registered, where 381 (12.4%) requested 2182 teleconsulting (41.4% of them were requested by nurses), which corresponds to a low use rate. After statistical analysis, it was observed that: the use rate of teleconsulting is influenced by the regional workshops (increase in 15.5% in the number of teleconsulting users; p=0.037); management of heath professional registration has a limited impact; there is a strong positive correlation (r=0.73; p=0.016) between the use of the teleconsulting service and web conference participation; field monitoring may influence the use rate. Conclusion: Finally, this work confirms the low use rate of the Telehealth services, and recommends that centralizing the action plan at the end user is the key to promote its sustainability.