Patient satisfaction with ophthalmic telemedicine visits during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

Purpose: To compare patient satisfaction for telemedicine visits to traditional in-person clinical visits during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Ophthalmology Department at Boston Medical Center (BMC), the largest academic safety-net hospital in New England. Methods: Patient satisfaction surveys using the NRC Health platform were sent to all patients in their preferred language following eye clinic visits at BMC from June to October 2020. Three visit types were studied 1) virtual visits via telephone or video conferencing, 2) hybrid visits with protocol-driven set of undilated imaging (e.g. OCT, fundus photos, visual fields), visual acuity, and intraocular pressure obtained by a trained technician, followed by a virtual visit with the physician within 1-2 weeks, and 3) traditional in-person visits. Twotailed Student's t-test was used to compare survey responses of telemedicine to traditional visits in 4 questions 1) trust in provider (4-point scale, trust), 2) felt provider listened (4- point scale, listened), 3) satisfied with amount of time spent with provider (4-point scale, time), and 4) recommend provider to other patients (10-point scale, recommend). Additionally, responses between English and non-English speakers, requiring trained interpreter services, were compared. Results: A total of 793 visits were included (44 virtual, 56 hybrid, 693 traditional). The majority of telemedicine visits were from the retina and optometry services (Figure 1). There was no statistically significant difference in trust, listened, time, or recommend when comparing virtual or hybrid visits to traditional visits (Table 1a). NonEnglish speakers had statistically significant lower scores in trust, listened, and time with no difference in recommend when compared to English speakers (Table 1b). When stratified by visit type, non-English speakers had a trend towards a lower score in trust for both virtual and hybrid groups. Conclusions: Telemedicine provides patients access to clinical care with decreased risk of infection during the COVID-19 pandemic. Non-English speakers tended to have less trust in the physician for all visit types, which should be considered when communicating with patients. Overall, we found that patients were equally satisfied with telemedicine visits as with traditional in-person visits in a hospital-based academic eye clinic.