Physicians prescribe patients more antibiotics via telemedicine than during in-person visits, according to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
For the study, researchers analyzed 13,000 telemedicine calls for outpatient respiratory tract infections, 67 percent of which resulted in a patient being prescribed an antibiotic.
Calls that resulted in an antibiotic prescription lasted an average of six and a half minutes, while calls in which no medication was prescribed lasted eight minutes.
These results suggest that telemedicine may not effectively curb antibiotics overuse, according to the study authors.