Provider confidence in the telemedicine spine evaluation: results from a global study.
Eur Spine J
; 30(8): 2109-2123, 2021 08.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1432544
ABSTRACT
PURPOSE:
To utilize data from a global spine surgeon survey to elucidate (1) overall confidence in the telemedicine evaluation and (2) determinants of provider confidence.METHODS:
Members of AO Spine International were sent a survey encompassing participant's experience with, perception of, and comparison of telemedicine to in-person visits. The survey was designed through a Delphi approach, with four rounds of question review by the multi-disciplinary authors. Data were stratified by provider age, experience, telemedicine platform, trust in telemedicine, and specialty.RESULTS:
Four hundred and eighty-five surgeons participated in the survey. The global effort included respondents from Africa (19.9%), Asia Pacific (19.7%), Europe (24.3%), North America (9.4%), and South America (26.6%). Providers felt that physical exam-based tasks (e.g., provocative testing, assessing neurologic deficits/myelopathy, etc.) were inferior to in-person exams, while communication-based aspects (e.g., history taking, imaging review, etc.) were equivalent. Participants who performed greater than 50 visits were more likely to believe telemedicine was at least equivalent to in-person visits in the ability to make an accurate diagnosis (OR 2.37, 95% C.I. 1.03-5.43). Compared to in-person encounters, video (versus phone only) visits were associated with increased confidence in the ability of telemedicine to formulate and communicate a treatment plan (OR 3.88, 95% C.I. 1.71-8.84).CONCLUSION:
Spine surgeons are confident in the ability of telemedicine to communicate with patients, but are concerned about its capacity to accurately make physical exam-based diagnoses. Future research should concentrate on standardizing the remote examination and the development of appropriate use criteria in order to increase provider confidence in telemedicine technology.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Telemedicine
/
Surgeons
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
/
Randomized controlled trials
Limits:
Humans
Language:
English
Journal:
Eur Spine J
Journal subject:
Orthopedics
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
S00586-020-06653-8
Similar
MEDLINE
...
LILACS
LIS