JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Video consultations (VC) have proven to be a useful tool to enhance access to medical care for patients. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the use of VC has risen sharply. However, since (the end of) the pandemic, they have only been used to a limited extent by insured individuals in the German statutory health insurance (SHI).

Objective:

The aim of this survey is to identify inhibiting and promoting factors for the use of VC in the SHI-insured population.

Methods:

Survey documents were distributed by 3 participating statutory health insurance funds to 33,816 insured individuals in four selected German federal states. Participation is anonymous and available in paper format or online via a QR code. Both descriptive methods as well as inferential statistics are performed for analysis. Subgroup analysis includes evaluations based on gender, age groups, community size, chronic disease and previous VC experience.

Results:

The response rate is 13.9%, resulting in 4,600 included questionnaires. Although 75.3% (n=3,132) of the insured are interested in using VC in general, only 6.7% (n=302) of them have used it to date. Among respondents with little or no VC experience, 88.3% (n=2,763) state that the lack of VC offered by physicians is the biggest obstacle to VC use. Other relevant inhibiting factors are concerns about the quality of medical care (n=1,573; 43.8%) and data protection (n=948; 24.6%). A lack of technical equipment and a stable Internet connection tend not to be an obstacle in the survey. The most relevant promoting factors are that a video application works without interruption (n=3,624, 92.7%) and that it is easy and intuitive to use (n=3,674, 92.4%).

Conclusions:

The results suggest, that insured individuals are interested in using VC, but were offered VC appointments rarely. Therefore, it is important to reduce potential obstacles on the part of the service providers, who are currently limiting the availability of VC. Existing hurdles can best be addressed by targeting subgroup specific hurdles as they tend to vary between subgroups.