A comparison of in-person versus telephone consultations for outpatient hospital care

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has triggered a transition towards telemedicine for delivering outpatient care. The evidence base for telemedicine is heterogeneous and its efficacy remains debated. We, therefore, designed a mixed-methods semi-structured survey to evaluate patients' and clinicians' experiences of outpatient telemedicine clinics during the pandemic. One-hundred and eighty-eight patients and 69 clinicians from two hospitals in Gloucestershire completed the survey. The quantitative results for patients rated in-person and telemedicine appointments similarly in all areas except communication (p<0.001) and overall quality (p=0.004), both in favour of in-person consultations, while clinicians rated all aspects of telemedicine appointments as inferior, with the exception of convenience (p=0.643). Qualitative analysis highlighted themes of communication and relationship building difficulties, confidentiality concerns, loss of visual inspection as a clinical tool and debatable time efficiency associated with telemedicine. Significant adaptation of current telemedicine services is required before it will be integrated into current practice.

Citation

Crook, R. L., Iftikhar, H., Moore, S., Lowdon, P., Modarres, P., & Message, S. (2022). A comparison of in-person versus telephone consultations for outpatient hospital care. Future healthcare journal, 9(2), 154–160. https://doi.org/10.7861/fhj.2022-0006

DOI

10.7861/fhj.2022-0006

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14709/560

Usage rights

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

License

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/