JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

This paper describes the rapid shift from in-person to video and telephonic care in a large health system in Florida, which serves acute pediatric, adult, and geriatric populations. While procedures and lessons learned offer a blueprint for health care systems, it reports more specifically how the providers are feeling about the change and some of the positives and concerns thereof.

Objective:

Input from providers of all health care systems is needed on the dramatic adjustment of care during the COVID-19 pandemic. A large integrated medical healthcare system in West-Central Florida rapidly assessed the views of interprofessional behavioral health providers on their experience shifting to telephone and video technologies.

Methods:

A 23-item anonymous survey with Likert questions on a 7-point scale separately COVID perceptions about both telephonic and video care. The survey took 10 minutes to complete and was conducted April 27, 2020 to May 11, 2020, following the in care on that started March 18, 2020.

Results:

Behavioral health professionals (N = 209) were 77.5% female, primarily aged 36-55 (52.6%), and outpatient-based (93%) included psychiatrists, therapists, counselors, and advanced practice nurses. Most (84.3%) had used video less than a year and they felt comfortable and satisfied with either mode or felt met the patients’ needs. Video was valued equally or more than telephone in all domains including quality of care, user experience, technology performance, satisfaction of technology, and user acceptability.

Conclusions:

When controlling for gender, age, experience with technology, or professional background, video visits had a statistically significant difference only in gender for the question regarding the care being as good as face-to-face visits. Here, women perceived the tele-video visits to be superior to telephone.