Homer Rafael, Biller Sandra, Schumaker Brant, Johnson Paul E
School of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA.
J Patient Exp. 2024 Dec 23;11:23743735241309442. doi: 10.1177/23743735241309442. eCollection 2024.
Telehealth has been shown as a tool to improve health access and outcomes in rural areas. There is less literature examining the usability and utility of telehealth by rural and low-income populations. Existing literature focuses on examining telehealth usability for specific telehealth platforms and specific use cases. There is minimal literature broadly examining telehealth usability in rural and low-income populations. Using the Telehealth Usability Questionnaire in conjunction with demographic questions, we examined telehealth usability in the Wyoming Medicaid population. Additionally, we explored whether factors such as rurality, age, gender, and whether the visit was behavioral, affected usability scores. (1) We found that overall, usability scores were high in all cases. (2) Wyoming Medicaid clients with behavioral visits demonstrated statistically significant increased usability scores compared to the already positive scores in patients with nonbehavioral visits. (3) The other variables we examined did not show any statistically significant differences in usability scores. (4) These results demonstrate broad usability of telemedicine in a rural and low-income population and may be used to justify expansion of telehealth services.
远程医疗已被证明是一种改善农村地区医疗服务可及性和医疗效果的工具。关于农村和低收入人群对远程医疗的易用性和实用性的研究文献较少。现有文献主要关注特定远程医疗平台和特定用例的远程医疗易用性。广泛研究农村和低收入人群远程医疗易用性的文献极少。我们结合人口统计学问题使用远程医疗易用性问卷，对怀俄明州医疗补助计划人群的远程医疗易用性进行了研究。此外，我们还探讨了诸如农村地区、年龄、性别以及就诊是否为行为健康方面等因素是否会影响易用性得分。（1）我们发现总体而言，所有情况下的易用性得分都很高。（2）与非行为健康就诊患者本就不错的得分相比，接受行为健康就诊的怀俄明州医疗补助计划客户的易用性得分有统计学意义的显著提高。（3）我们研究的其他变量在易用性得分上未显示出任何统计学意义上的显著差异。（4）这些结果表明远程医疗在农村和低收入人群中具有广泛的易用性，可用于证明扩大远程医疗服务的合理性。
