Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Apr 5, 2023
Date Accepted: Oct 4, 2023
Date Submitted to PubMed: Oct 5, 2023
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Online Visit for Thyroid Surgery Clinical Care-Trend, Influence Factors, and Doctor‒Patient Perspective
ABSTRACT
Background:
In recent years, the new generation of telecommunication technologies has profoundly changed the traditional medical industry. To alleviate the medical difficulty of patients with thyroid diseases, hospitals have opened online visits and actively combined online to offline (O2O) outpatient services.
Objective:
This study aims to illustrate the present state of thyroid online outpatient service and explore the influence factors of thyroid surgical outpatient choice.
Methods:
We collected the complete online and office outpatient records of the thyroid surgery center of West China Hospital. A total of 300884 completed patient encounters occurred (201840 office visits and 99044 online visits) from January 1, 2019, to May 31, 2022. We performed multinomial logistic regression to evaluate the correlation between the chosen visit type and patients’ sociodemographic characteristics.
Results:
The number of online visits rapidly increased since March 2020 and reached 45.1% of all encounters in December 2021. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has dramatically accelerated the development of online visits. Online visits were preferred by younger patients, female patients, patients with relatively high-paying jobs, and first-visit patients. The medicine cost (P<0.0001) and examination cost (P<0.0001) of office visits were significantly higher than those of online visits.
Conclusions:
Online outpatient visits have increased rapidly in recent years, and the COVID-19 pandemic has boosted their development. The long-term effect of online visits on thyroid patients’ treatment and its relationship with thyroid surgery call for further clinical practice. Clinical Trial: Not applicable.
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