Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: May 16, 2023
Date Accepted: Jan 31, 2024
Outpatient video visits during the COVID-19 pandemic; a cross-sectional survey study on patients’ experiences and characteristics
ABSTRACT
Background:
During the first lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic, an exponential increase in video consultations replacing outpatient in-person visits was observed in hospitals. Insight in patients’ experiences with this type of consultation is helpful for a broad, sustainable and patient-centered implementation of video consultation.
Objective:
Examine patients’ experiences with video consultation in the COVID-19 pandemic and identify discriminative patient and consultation characteristics to determine when a video consultation is most feasible.
Methods:
A cross-sectional survey study was conducted. Patients aged 18 years and older, scheduled for a video consultation at the outpatient clinic of a Dutch university medical center from August 2020 up to December 2020 for all medical specialties were eligible. Patients’ experiences were explored with a study specific survey using descriptive quantitative statistics. Open-ended questions were qualitatively analyzed and categorized in appreciated aspects and aspects for improvement. Discriminative patient and consultation characteristics were identified by selection of 3 distinctive survey items. Characteristics for respondents who did and did not score all 3 items positively were analyzed using the Mann-Whitney U test.
Results:
Quantitative analyses showed that the vast majority (91.5%) of respondents (total n=1054) was satisfied with their video consultation, with a mean overall grade of 8.6 out of 10. In the qualitative analyses a total of 738 patients cited appreciated aspects and 474 patients experienced aspects for improvement during their consultation. Patients with a better self-rated health significantly more often reported a positive evaluation (P=0.001), which also held for first consultation (versus follow-up, P<0.001) and other medical specialties (versus surgical and non-surgical, P<0.001).
Conclusions:
Video consultation was perceived highly satisfactory by patients during the COVID pandemic, with best experience reported by healthy participants, and participants undergoing a first consultation. Appreciated aspects are mainly present at the level of the individual professional, the organizational level and the innovation itself. Mentioned aspects for improvement are surmountable. Clinical Trial: -
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