JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Virtual care was rapidly integrated into pediatric health services during the COVID-19 pandemic. While virtual care offers many benefits, it is necessary to better understand the experiences of those who receive, deliver, and coordinate virtual care in order to support sustainable, high-quality, and patient-centred health care. To date, methods implemented to evaluate users’ experiences of virtual care have been highly variable, making comparison and data synthesis difficult.

Objective:

To describe current evaluation strategies used to understand personal experiences with pediatric virtual care in Canada.

Methods:

We conducted a mixed-methods environmental scan. First, we distributed an online questionnaire to clinical, research, and operational leaders delivering and evaluating pediatric virtual care in Canada. The questionnaire collected information about how experiences with virtual care have been or are currently being evaluated, and whether these evaluations included the perspectives of children or youth, families, providers and/or support staff. Respondents were asked to share the questions they used in their evaluations, which we categorized and tabulated according to common content. Second, we conducted semi-structured interviews to further explore ’our respondent’s evaluation experiences across four domains: evaluation approaches, distribution methods, response rates, lessons learned, and interest in a core set of questions for future evaluations.

Results:

There were 72 respondents to the online questionnaire, of which 15 reported conducting virtual care evaluations. These evaluations measured the virtual care experiences of parents or caregivers (15, 100%), children or youth (11, 73%), health care providers (11, 73%), and support staff (4, 27%). The most common data collection method used was electronic questionnaires distributed by email. Two respondents used validated tools; the remainder modified existing tools or developed new tools. Common questions included overall participant satisfaction, comparison of virtual care to in-person care, and whether participants would choose virtual care options in future. Interview findings indicate respondents frequently relied on methods used by peers, and that a standardized, core set of questions to evaluate experiences with virtual care would be helpful to improve evaluation practices and support pediatric health care delivery.

Conclusions:

Across Canada, experiences with pediatric virtual care have been evaluated using a variety of methods. A more consistent evaluation approach using standardized tools may enable more regular comparisons of experiences with virtual care and synthesis of findings across health care settings. In turn, this may better inform our approach to virtual care, improve its integration into health systems, and facilitate sustainable, high-quality, patient-centered care.