Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Diabetes
Date Submitted: May 21, 2024
Open Peer Review Period: May 21, 2024 - Jul 16, 2024
Date Accepted: Jan 22, 2025
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Effectiveness of current telemedicine approaches in endocrinology care for type 2 diabetes: a qualitative study of patient and clinician perspectives
ABSTRACT
Background:
Since rapid uptake in 2020, use of telemedicine to deliver diabetes specialty care has persisted. However, evidence for ongoing benefits, shortcomings, and approaches to improve telemedicine care for type 2 diabetes after more than 3 years of sustained use is limited.
Objective:
Assess clinician and patient perspectives on specific benefits and limitations of current telemedicine care delivery for type 2 diabetes and approaches to enhance telemedicine effectiveness for patients who rely on it.
Methods:
We conducted semi-structed qualitative interviews with 15 diabetes specialty clinicians and 13 adults with type 2 diabetes. We used a qualitative description approach to characterize participant perspectives on care delivery for type 2 diabetes via telemedicine.
Results:
Both clinicians and patients identify significant benefits of telemedicine in overcoming both physical (geographic, transportation) and scheduling (work commitments, wait times) barriers to specialty care for type 2 diabetes. In addition, telemedicine may enhance communication around diabetes care by improving information-sharing between patients and clinicians. However, clinicians identify limited availability of home blood glucose data and vital signs as factors which impair optimal management of type 2 diabetes and related comorbid conditions via telemedicine. Pre-visit preparation, involvement of multidisciplinary providers, and frequent brief check-ins were identified by patients and clinicians as potential strategies to improve the quality of telemedicine care for adults with type 2 diabetes.
Conclusions:
Patients and clinicians identify key strengths of telemedicine in enhancing access to diabetes specialty care for adults with type 2 diabetes and describe approaches to ensure that telemedicine delivers high-quality diabetes care to patients who rely on it.
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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.