ABSTRACT
Introduction: Sars-CoV-2 virus pandemic of 2019 necessitated a transition to telehealth for many healthcare encounters. The telehealth user experience and any potential environmental impact of this transition to e-Visits for gastrointestinal diseases is hitherto unstudied. Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study of patients who underwent telehealth encounters (telephone visits and video visits) with the outpatient gastroenterology clinics at West Virginia University, Morgantown. Patients were reached by telephone and were asked to provide information to fill in pre-designed survey questionnaires that incorporated a validated telehealth usability questionnaire. The Telehealth usability questionnaire (TUQ) incorporated Likert scales (1-7) to rate usability questions. Variables were also collected with chart review by two study authors. Distance of patients’ residence from our clinic was calculated using demographic data on EPIC. Environmental protection agency (EPA) calculators were utilized to calculate greenhouse emissions that were prevented due to televisits in lieu of in person visits. Results: A total of 81 video visits and 89 telephone visits were performed for GERD in the study period of March 2020-March 2021. 111 patients were able to be enrolled in the study and filled in the questionnaires, revealing a response rate of 65.29%. Mean age was higher in the telephone visit cohort (43.45 +/- 14.32 vs 52.34 +/- 17.46, p: 0.04) and most participants were female (76.58%). Overall user satisfaction was high (mean scores for all usability variates >5). Comparative analysis of the telephone and video visits revealed significantly higher mean ratings for usefulness and user comfort questions in the patients who had video encounters compared to those with telephone encounters, as shown in Table 2. A total of 7.02 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions were prevented due to non-usage of the 391.5 gallons of gasoline needed to transport these patients to and from the facility from their residence. Conclusion Telehealth visits for GERD were rated highly in terms of usefulness, satisfaction, and user comfort/usability by patients. Video visits received higher mean ratings for usefulness and user comfort. Tele-visits for GERD are therefore well received by patients and in addition can contribute to notable reductions in unnecessary greenhouse emissions. (Table Presented)