Patients and Provider Experiences with Telemedicine for Follow-up Care in Military Settings.

BACKGROUND

Telemedicine offers patients and physicians the opportunity to advance health care delivery to active duty and retired military personnel. Assessing the efficacy and feasibility of performing post-surgery follow-up assessment through telemedicine at a large military hospital, while examining patient and provider experience and satisfaction with the telemedicine follow-up visit and estimating patients' willingness-to-use and willingness-to-pay for telemedicine consultations may help to shape the future use of telemedicine in the military settings.

METHODS

We administered surveys to 96 unique patients who agreed to perform a follow-up telemedicine visit, rather than a traditional face-to-face visit, after undergoing a minor surgery at a large army military hospital in the southeast region of the United States. We also administered a survey to six physicians.

RESULTS

Most of the patients strongly agreed (86.5%) or somewhat agreed (10.8%) that their medical problems were adequately addressed during the telemedicine visit. Most physicians were either satisfied (7.5%) or extremely satisfied (75.5%) with the overall experience. Less than half of the patients were willing to use a similar telemedicine visit for a fee in the future and only two patients were willing to pay $100 for such visit.

CONCLUSION

After minor surgery, follow-up telemedicine visits may be an effective, efficient, and convenient alternative to face-to-face visits for active duty and retired military personnel.