Neurology survey reveals high satisfaction for telehealth
by Paul Govern
As previously reported, patients at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have given high scores to the telehealth services that were rapidly deployed all across Vanderbilt Medical Group as the COVID-19 pandemic reached Tennessee.
A post-visit outpatient survey from VUMC’s Department of Neurology, conducted under an ongoing departmental quality improvement initiative, has turned up additional evidence of high satisfaction with telehealth among both patients and clinicians. In a new paper in Telemedicine and e-Health, a team reports results from questionnaires sent to patients following 3,935 teleneurology visits conducted from March 18 to May 8. VUMC clinicians who provided these services were also surveyed.
- More than 97% of patients were very highly (83%) or highly (14%) confident in the telehealth care they received.
- More than 89% of patients rated the telehealth visit as excellent (69%) or very good (21%).
- Based on the ZIP codes of these patients, they saved an average of just more than two hours of round-trip travel time per visit.
- More than 98% of clinicians were very likely (71%) or somewhat likely (28%) to recommend telehealth to other clinicians.
“The United States must continue to advance upon this unprecedented acceptance of telehealth and never reimplement the policies that have made telehealth inaccessible to many Americans for the past several decades,” the authors write.
The authors include Kelly Harper, BPS, Mikayla Roof, Nivan Wadhawan, Ananya Terala, Maxim Turchan, MS, Francesca Bagnato, MD, PhD, Raghu Upender, MD, Huong Pham, MD, Bryan Eoff, BS, and David Charles, MD.