Teleconsultations for rheumatic diseases during CoVID-19 pandemic: Usefulness, patient response and prospects for future practice

ABSTRACT

Background/Purpose: Teleconsultations have been an important means of communicating with the patients due to the travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. We assessed its usefulness and patients' views on their future use. Methods: Patients who received teleconsultations using telephone and WhatsApp during the COVID-19 pandemic were screened and asked to fill an online questionnaire seeking their views regarding teleconsultations in terms of their usefulness, cost-effectiveness, feasibility for future use. Only those patients were included who were of age ≥18 years and had had at least 2 physical visits in the past at our hospital. Information regarding their demographic features, disease characteristics like diagnosis, duration of disease was also collected. For the final analysis, 230 responses out of the 410 participants were included for who all the desired information was available. Results: Among the 230 patients, mean age was 38 years with a mean duration of disease of 4.25 years, 68 (29%) were male, 190 (83%) had rheumatoid arthritis, 100 (43%) patients assessed their disease condition as bad/severe and 90 (39%) depended on others to use a smartphone for teleconsultations. Among these patients, 131 (57%) patients missed their scheduled OPD appointment, 115 (50%) reported worsening of symptoms, 81 (35%) needed to consult a local physician for their problems. Regarding teleconsultations, 142 (62%) patients reported benefit with the teleconsultation service and 181 (79%) graded it ≥3 on a scale of 1-5 where 5 meant very useful (Figure 1). A total of 161 (70%) patients wanted to use it for future consultations. The commonest reasons for choosing teleconsultation were ease of appointment (52%), avoiding the need of travelling (22%) and cost-effectiveness (22%). Conclusions: Teleconsultation is a useful alternative to physical consultation with a high satisfaction rate. It could be a useful costeffective tool in a resource limited setting of developing countries like India.