JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The solution to the growing problem of rural residents lacking healthcare access maybe found in the use of telemedicine and mHealth. Using mHealth or telemedicine allows patients from rural or remote areas to have a better access to healthcare.

Objective:

The objective of this paper is to understand factors influencing the choice of communication medium receiving care, through the analysis of mHealth versus Telemedicine encounters of a virtual urgent clinic (VUC).

Methods:

We conducted a post-deployment evaluation of a new virtual healthcare service, Virtual Urgent Clinic (VUC), which utilizes mHealth and telemedicine modalities to provide patient care. We used Multinomial Logistic Model to test the significance and predictive power of a set of features in determining patients’ preferred method of telecare encounters--a nominal outcome variable of two levels (mHealth and Telemedicine).

Results:

Post-deployment, 1,403 encounter were recorded, of which 87.53% (1,228) is completed with mHealth and 175(12.47%) are Telemedicine encounters. Gender and Settings are the most predictive determinants of patients’ preferred method of telecare delivery, with extremely small p-values of less than 0.01. The Pearson’s Chi-Square test returned a strong indication of dependency between Chief Complaints and Encounter mediums, with an extremely small p-value of = 9.447e-06. Of mHealth patients, 91.2% (n=154) were satisfied by their encounter compared to 88.5% (n=31) of Telemedicine patients.

Conclusions:

We studied factors influencing patients’ choice of communication medium, mHealth and Telemedicine, for a virtual care clinic. Gender and geographic location, as well as their chief complaint are strong predictors of patient’s choice of communication medium for their ugent care needs. This study suggests providing the option of mHealth or Telemedicine to patients, and suggesting which medium would be a better fit for the patient based on their characteristics.