Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Feb 22, 2021
Open Peer Review Period: Feb 22, 2021 - Apr 19, 2021
Date Accepted: Apr 15, 2021
Date Submitted to PubMed: May 28, 2021
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Teleconsultation in the management of elective orthopaedic and spinal conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic: A prospective cohort study of patient experiences
ABSTRACT
Background:
The global adoption of teleconsultation has been expedited as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. By allowing remote communication, teleconsultation may help limit the spread of the virus while maintaining the crucial patient-provider relationship.
Objective:
To evaluate the value of teleconsultation compared to in-person visits in the management of elective orthopaedic and spinal procedures.
Methods:
This was a prospective observational cohort study of 853 patients receiving orthopaedic and spinal care at a private outpatient clinic in New Zealand. Patients were randomly divided into two groups: (1) patients receiving telephone consultation remotely; and (2) patients receiving in-person office consultations at the outpatient clinic. All patients received telephone consultations for four weeks during the mandated COVID-19 lockdown, followed by four weeks of telephone or in-person consultation. Patient preference, satisfaction, and duration of visit were recorded. Comparisons of patient preference between groups, visit type, sex, and location were performed using Chi-square tests; similarly, satisfaction scores and visit durations were compared using a general linear model.
Results:
We report that 91% of patients in the telephone group preferred teleconsultation over in-person office visits during the COVID-19 lockdown (p=0.000). A combined-group analysis shows that 55.3% of all patients preferred teleconsultation compared to 31.2% who preferred in-person office visits (p=0.000). Patients in the telephone group reported significantly higher satisfaction scores (9.95 +/- 0.04, 95% CI [9.87-10.03]) compared to patients in the in-person group (9.53 +/- 0.04, 95% CI [9.45-9.62]; p=0.000). Additionally, in-person consultations were significantly longer in duration compared to telephone consultations, with a mean visit time of 6.70 min +/-0.18, 95% CI [6.32-7.02] compared to 5.10 min +/-0.17, 95% CI [4.73-5.42], respectively (p=0.000).
Conclusions:
Patients who utilize telephone consultations are more likely to prefer it over traditional, in-person visits in the future. This increased preference, coupled with higher patient satisfaction scores and shorter duration of visits, suggests that teleconsultation has a role in orthopaedic surgery, which may even extend beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. Clinical Trial: N/A
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.