JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the traditional healthcare model has evolved towards a more patient-centric model. In relation to this trend, digital health services have seen an acceleration, which may have significant implications for the healthcare model.

Objective:

Due to the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare facilities, it is important to explore health professionals’ willingness to adopt a digital health delivery model for medicine and healthcare. In support of this broader goal, we implemented a pilot study to assess the use of a training video that attempts to shift the healthcare professional’s mindset to be more patient centric within a digital health context.

Methods:

We utilize the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) website to reach 499 health centers and clinics within a 50-mile range of the city of Claremont. We recruit healthcare professionals by sending e-mails and orally through virtual and in-person communications. To confirm interest and intent to participate, participants received a questionnaire generated on Qualtrics. Based on their expertise in telehealth, the participants naturally fall into two groups: experts and non-experts. In addition, we randomly assigned participants into a control group (questionnaire with no training video) and a treatment group (a questionnaire before and after a training video). All responses were collected from Qualtrics. Collected data includes demographics, accessibility and benefits, usability, and engagements with telemedicine.

Results:

In total, 26 participants provided insightful responses to their telehealth experiences. Overall, most healthcare professionals agreed that telehealth benefits patients and is important for fostering health equity. However, current provider benefit and compensation has room for improvement. Participants with telehealth experience generally had an overall positive view of telehealth services. By contrast, participants without experience generally remained neutral but were willing to incorporate telehealth services in the future.

Conclusions:

Our study suggested that digital health improves flexibility and accessibility in patient care interactions. By making physician visits easier for patients in lieu of the pandemic, digital health can be seen to influence the provider-patient dynamic relationship. Responses from the non-expert group implied that digital health is useful to the patient. However, digital health implementations created some complications that affected the physician or provider’s efficiency. Therefore, several respondents indicate that digital health should be incorporated into the medical school curriculum to ease its implementation into healthcare systems.