The Application and Patient-Reported Experience of Telephone Consultations in Elective Foot and Ankle Orthopaedic Surgery: 12-Month Follow-up.
Foot Ankle Int
; 43(5): 694-702, 2022 05.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1833056
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Telemedicine offers convenient and affordable health care, overcoming the logistical challenges of face-to-face encounters. Clinicians increasingly relied on telemedicine during the global pandemic. To assess the ongoing role for telemedicine in orthopaedics, we prospectively analyzed the failure rate, safety and patient-reported experience of telephone consultations for 12 months.METHODS:
265 telephone Foot/Ankle consultations were conducted in April 2020 and were prospectively analyzed over 12 months. The primary outcome measure was the rate of failed telephone consultations. A consultation was deemed unacceptable if the patient did not answer, if the clinician could not reach a conclusion or if any outcome changed over 12 months. Secondary outcome measures included patient-reported satisfaction and time saved by avoiding a face-to-face visit.RESULTS:
A clinical decision was reached in 84% of follow-up telephone consultations and 64% of new patient consultations (P = 0.001). Sixty-six percent were managed with nonoperative therapies, 16% were discharged, and 11% were added to the waiting list for surgery. The reasons for failing to achieve a clinical decision included failure to contact the patient (12.8%), inappropriate discharge with subsequent rereferral (1.9%), and insufficient clinical information (1.5%). Overall, 84.7% of patients reported that the telephone consultation was highly useful and 71.9% would recommend it to a friend or family member. Patients reported a mean time saving of 120 minutes.CONCLUSION:
Based on our experience, we provide recommended criteria for the safe and practical use of telephone consultations and suggest versatile patient care pathways into which a telephone consultation can be incorporated. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE Level IV, prospective cohort series (noncomparative).Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Orthopedics
/
Orthopedic Procedures
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Cohort study
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
Limits:
Humans
Language:
English
Journal:
Foot Ankle Int
Journal subject:
Orthopedics
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
10711007211068478
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