ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Telemedicine, in various forms, has existed for over 100 years. Increased bandwidth and emergence of easily accessible video communication over the last 15-20 years has led to video health or “telemedicine” gaining momentum. In the COVID pandemic there was an accelerated uptake of telemedicine at Academic Medical Centers (AMCs). There has been debate over this rapid implementation and the quality of care delivered by video visits. To examine this issue, we looked at our own academic primary care practice patient satisfaction scores to see if people were less satisfied with their interaction with medical providers during video visits versus in person medical visits. METHODS: Mount Sinai Health System uses a private vendor called Q reviews to evaluate patient satisfaction with 24 hours of a health care visit. With-in minutes post-visit patients receive a text-based message to their mobile phone with a link to the review site. A 5-point Likert Scale is used for all questions. We performed a retrospective study to compare the patient experience in a primary care practice at Mount Sinai Beth Israel. RESULTS: We reviewed all patient responses (1821) for in-person or video visits from June 1, 2020 to April 30, 2021. We compared responses for the three questions on the physician role (see table) Overall, patient satisfaction did not differ statistically on these questions. Response rates were similar;1,427/ 7,913 (18%) for in-person visit and 394/2,543 (15%) for telemedicine visits. CONCLUSIONS: We found no statistically significant difference found in patient satisfaction between video visits and in-person visits on the provider specific questions we reviewed. Many worry, about this rapid transition to video visits driven by the COVID-19 pandemic and propose a return to the majority or entirety of health care visits being in person, when possible. Prior to the pandemic new companies were entering the health care market place providing telehealth or video visits and taking patients from traditional office-based practices. Many AMC patients face significant social and financial hurdles to attending in person visits. This retrospective data shows that AMC based practices can and do provide a high level of engagement for patients whose visits are appropriate for a video visit. While this cohort may have had some self-selection biases, as patients could choose which type of visit, they would attend, it does show a proof of concept that we should maintain video visits as an option for patients seen at AMC practices. Future studies should focus on if telemedicine can improve healthcare disparities and which types of cases are not appropriate for telehealth visits.