Family Physicians’ Use of, Barriers to, and Attitudes Toward Remote Diagnosis and Treatment in China: A National Web-Based Survey

<b>Background/Objectives:</b> China has introduced a series of policies to encourage family physicians (FPs) to provide remote diagnosis and treatment (RDT) services, with the ultimate goal of providing more continuous, convenient, and efficient medical services for all residents, especially elderly patients and patients with chronic diseases. However, few studies have focused on this important issue. The aim of this study was to provide a comprehensive description of FPs' use of, barriers to, and attitudes toward RDT in China. <b>Methods:</b> A cross-sectional survey was implemented for this study. The data were analyzed via basic descriptive statistics and are expressed as percentages. Additionally, a single-factor logistic regression was used to compare groups in terms of outcome measures. <b>Results:</b> Among the 682 respondents, 63.8% had participated in RDT, and 36.2% had never participated in RDT. Among the 435 respondents who participated in RDT, 19.1% were high-frequency users, and 80.9% were low-frequency users. The results of the single-factor logistic regression revealed that there were significant differences in the use of RDT among FPs in terms of age (<i>p</i> = 0.034), educational background (<i>p</i> < 0.001), hospital type (<i>p</i> = 0.008), income as a result of their work as an FP (<i>p</i> = 0.002), form of employment (<i>p</i> = 0.001), and general practitioner status (<i>p</i> < 0.001). Moreover, there were significant differences in the use frequency of RDT among FPs in terms of age (<i>p</i> = 0.009), years of practice as a health service provider (<i>p</i> = 0.001), years of practice as an FP (<i>p</i> = 0.003), educational background (<i>p</i> = 0.048), and working hours as an FP (<i>p</i> = 0.014). However, a lack of policy support (58.5%), technology support (55.3%), and information support (52.5%) were the top three factors hindering FPs from participating in RDT. Overall, FPs had positive attitudes toward RDT services, with more than half of the respondents expressing that they could benefit from such services and showing increasing interest in using them. <b>Conclusions:</b> The findings of this research can improve policymakers' understanding of FPs' use of, barriers to, and attitudes toward RDT. Our findings also provide suggestions, such as those for improving the promotion of RDT, optimizing relevant laws, and providing technical support for FPs to use RDT, which may help optimize related policies. There are also some limitations in our study; for example, the sample in this study included provincial administrative regions across China, but not all provinces were covered. In the future, research covering all provinces of the country could be carried out to make the research more nationally representative.