Online consultations account for around 4% of primary care psychology sessions in Belgium

Online consultations account for around 4% of primary care psychology sessions in Belgium

Online consultations account for around 4% of all consultations by primary care psychologists in Belgium — a number I came across thanks to a public dashboard I hadn’t known about before.

Prior to the pandemic, a minority of psychologists had relied on online consultations. That obviously surged and everything — supposedly — went back to normal afterwards. It was difficult to reliably assess the remaining use. Or at least, so I thought.

Sarah Morsink recently directed me to a public dashboard with detailed statistics on reimbursed primary psychological care in Belgium. It’s obviously only a subset of psychologists as it focuses on primary care, but it’s nevertheless interesting to see that since May 2021, over 170k online consultations have been registered.

Based on the dashboard, it’s not possible to determine how online is integrated into trajectories, but if I recall correctly, a first face-to-face session remains mandatory, so we can assume that following that: some might do full online trajectories, and others will rely on pragmatic use of online consultations when conditions require it. From that perspective, 3.6% seems like a fair number.

Regardless, it’s nice to see this level of transparent and detailed reporting of more than 4.6 million sessions by over half a million patients. The additional documentation (in Dutch and French) is probably important if you want to make the most out of this.