Authors: Jennifer M Polinski Tobias Barker Nancy Gagliano Andrew Sussman Troyen A Brennan William H Shrank
Publish Date: 2015/08/13
Volume: 31, Issue: 3, Pages: 269-275
Abstract
Onequarter of US patients do not have a primary care provider or do not have complete access to one Work and personal responsibilities also compete with finding convenient accessible care Telehealth services facilitate patients’ access to care but whether patients are satisfied with telehealth is unclearPatients reported their age gender and whether they had health insurance and/or a primary care provider Patients rated their satisfaction with seeing diagnostic images hearing and seeing the remote practitioner the assisting onsite nurse’s capability quality of care convenience and overall understanding Patients ranked telehealth visits compared to traditional ones better defined as preferring telehealth just as good defined as liking telehealth or worse Predictors of preferring or liking telehealth were assessed via multivariate logistic regressionIn total 1734 54 of 3303 patients completed the survey 70 were women and 41 had no usual place of care Between 94 and 99 reported being “very satisfied” with all telehealth attributes Onethird preferred a telehealth visit to a traditional inperson visit An additional 57 liked telehealth Lack of medical insurance increased the odds of preferring telehealth OR = 083 95 CI 072–097 Predictors of liking telehealth were female gender OR = 168 104–272 and being very satisfied with their overall understanding of telehealth OR = 276 184–415 quality of care received OR = 234 142–387 and telehealth’s convenience OR = 287 109–794
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