JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Telehealth technology can create a disruptive communication environment for frontline care providers (FCPs) who bridge virtual communication between patients and specialists in electronic consultation. As FCPs are dealing with various technology features when communicating between patients and specialists, FCPs’ flexible attitude and behaviors to use various telehealth-related technology features can change the outcome of virtual care consultation service.

Objective:

The objective of this research is to examine frontline care providers (FCPs)’ technology adaptation behaviors in the electronic consultation context. From a perspective of FCPs, we reapply and retest a theoretical model, reflecting a mechanism through which technology users’ personal characteristics and technology adaptation behavior enhance technology use performance. Particularly in provider-to-provider communication, we explore the association among FCPs’ IT-related personal characteristics, adaptive telehealth technology use and virtual service performance using this theoretical model.

Methods:

An online survey was administered to collect individual FCPs’ personal traits, IT adaptation and perception on virtual service performance. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS- SEM) is used to estimate our predictive model of personal traits - IT adaptation e.g. exploitative use (use the telehealth technology in a standard way) and exploratory use (use the telehealth technology as innovative way) – virtual service performance.

Results:

We collected 147 responses from Graduate nursing students, resulting in 121 valid responses from the cross-section online survey. Our theoretical model explained 60.0% of the variance in exploitatively use of telehealth technology, 44% of the variance in exploratory use of telehealth technology and 66% of the variance in virtual service performance. We found that exploitative IT use is an important driver to increase virtual service performance (beta=.762, p-value=.000), and personal characteristics such as habit is positively associated with both exploitative (beta=.293, p-value=.008) and exploratory use behaviors (beta=.414, p-value=.006) while computer self-efficacy is positively associated with exploitative use of telehealth technology (beta=.311, p-value=.047).

Conclusions:

This study discusses the unique role of FCPs’ in virtual care service context and highlights the importance of their telehealth adaptation behavior in electronic consultation context. We showed that FCPs perceived telehealth technologies need to function as intended otherwise it may create frustration or avoidance of the telehealth technology. Moreover, FCP’s habitual use of various technologies in daily lives also motivate them to adaptively use telehealth technology for improving virtual care service. The findings of our study has practical implications for health practitioners and health IT developers in that understanding FCPs’ technology habit and adaptation can inform healthcare policy and further provide better view on the design of telehealth technology for online communication.