University School of Management and Entrepreneurship, Delhi Technological University, Delhi, India.
Telemed J E Health. 2021 Dec;27(12):1325-1331. doi: 10.1089/tmj.2020.0570. Epub 2021 Mar 12.
This article reviews the studies examining patients' perspective toward telemedicine and their preference for virtual health care services. An electronic literature search using PubMed was conducted to identify relevant research studies published between December 2019 and August 2020. Twenty-five studies were selected out of 1,041 studies based on inclusion and exclusion criteria, which highlight patients' satisfaction and experience with the use of telemedicine during the pandemic. The findings based upon 48,144 surveyed patients and 146 providers in 12 different countries revealed high satisfaction with virtual encounters across a spectrum of diseases. Telemedicine was found satisfactory on various outcome measures, such as addressing patients' concerns, communication with health care providers, usefulness, and reliability. Most common advantages were time saved due to lesser traveling and waiting time, better accessibility, convenience, and cost efficiency. Age and sex did not significantly impact the satisfaction levels. Physicians and patients both showed a strong preference for continued usage and agreed upon telemedicine's potential to complement the regular health care services even after the pandemic. Technical challenges (reported in 10 studies) and lack of physical examination (reported in 13 studies) were the main limitations encountered in virtual visits. Long-term sustainability of telemedicine for all socioeconomic classes requires closer scrutiny of issues such as technology, training, reimbursement, data privacy, legal guidelines, and framework. Telemedicine must be adopted as a proactive strategy and scaled-up even beyond emergency usage due to its immense potential in complementing conventional health care services, such as diagnosis, treatment, follow-up, surveillance, and infection control.
本文回顾了研究患者对远程医疗的看法及其对虚拟医疗服务的偏好。使用 PubMed 进行了电子文献检索，以确定在 2019 年 12 月至 2020 年 8 月期间发表的相关研究。根据纳入和排除标准，从 1041 项研究中选择了 25 项研究，这些研究突出了患者在大流行期间使用远程医疗的满意度和体验。基于对 12 个不同国家的 48144 名调查患者和 146 名提供者的调查结果显示，在各种疾病中，虚拟就诊的满意度都很高。远程医疗在各种结果衡量标准上都令人满意，例如解决患者的问题、与医疗保健提供者的沟通、有用性和可靠性。最常见的优势是由于旅行和等待时间减少、更好的可及性、便利性和成本效益而节省了时间。年龄和性别对满意度水平没有显著影响。医生和患者都强烈倾向于继续使用，并同意远程医疗有可能在大流行后补充常规医疗服务。在虚拟访问中遇到的主要限制包括技术挑战（在 10 项研究中报告）和缺乏身体检查（在 13 项研究中报告）。为了确保所有社会经济阶层都能长期可持续使用远程医疗，需要更密切地关注技术、培训、报销、数据隐私、法律准则和框架等问题。远程医疗必须作为一种主动策略被采用，并在紧急使用之外进一步扩大规模，因为它在补充常规医疗服务方面具有巨大潜力，例如诊断、治疗、随访、监测和感染控制。
