Studies into video telemedicine diagnostic accuracy and patient satisfaction find positive trends

Through the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, clinicians throughout Mayo Clinic transitioned to digital modes of care to proceed to deal with sufferers safely—leading to a rise of over 10,000% in video telemedicine visits between sufferers and scientific care workforce members throughout the group. These monumental shifts in care supply additionally made for a possibility to conduct a number of the largest video telemedicine research thus far.

“The elevated utilization of video telemedicine allowed us to judge quite a lot of affected person populations and care wants that had traditionally been difficult to seize as a consequence of gradual rising adoption,” says Bart Demaerschalk, M.D., who helped to steer the research from Mayo Clinic’s Heart for Digital Well being. “Practically in a single day, departments and specialties that had traditionally relied on in-person care needed to transition to telemedicine, vastly increasing the chances for analysis.”

Their findings have resulted in two research to date, one printed in JAMA Open Community and the opposite within the Affected person Expertise Journal. The outcomes sign optimistic developments in affected person satisfaction with telemedicine and in addition spotlight the diagnostic accuracy of those digital encounters because it pertains to in-person care.

Telemedicine diagnoses match these of in-person appointments more often than not

In a single research printed in JAMA Open Community, researchers discovered that 87% of the preliminary diagnoses made throughout telemedicine appointments had been later confirmed throughout in-person appointments.

To place it merely: diagnoses over video are often spot on.

Researchers evaluated greater than 97,000 video visits throughout Mayo Clinic between March and June 2020. Of these visits, 2,400 sufferers had a go to for a brand new well being concern and adopted up with an in-person appointment inside 90 days.

The very best price of matching telemedicine and in-person diagnoses was present in specialties that included psychiatry and psychology, allergy and immunology, orthopedics, and urology. Whereas diagnostic concordance was barely decrease in specialties equivalent to dermatology and ear, nostril and throat (ENT), nonetheless, near 80% of these diagnoses had been confirmed in particular person.

Dr. Demaerschalk says these findings spotlight the significance of a hybrid care mannequin and must be reassuring to sufferers and suppliers.

“In relation to care supply, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all resolution,” says Dr. Demaerschalk. “Some circumstances, like psychological well being diagnoses, rely closely on conversations to tell diagnoses, which bodes nicely for a video go to. Different circumstances could also be robust to pinpoint with no doctor examination, imaging or exams. In these situations, video visits might higher function an entry level to in-person care.”

Affected person satisfaction scores align throughout video telemedicine and in-person visits

In one other research printed within the Affected person Expertise Journal earlier this month, researchers inside Mayo Clinic’s Heart for Digital Well being and the Workplace of Affected person Expertise evaluated affected person satisfaction scores from over 300,000 sufferers handled both in particular person or through video telemedicine through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Their findings marked a optimistic shift for telemedicine. Affected person satisfaction scores had been total equal throughout in-person visits and video telemedicine. The workforce additionally noticed a number of fascinating developments with sure age teams, genders and races, which countered historic perceptions of telemedicine and characterize alternatives for future research.

“We discovered the best stage of affected person satisfaction with telemedicine visits was amongst sufferers throughout the 65-year-old to 79-year-old age vary,” says Nicky Ploog, digital apply enablement supervisor for Mayo Clinic’s Heart for Digital Well being and first writer on the research. “Traditionally, there was the idea that this age group is resistance to telemedicine, however these findings spotlight how essential it’s we goal telemedicine to all sufferers, not simply the youthful, maybe extra tech-savvy customers.”

Nonetheless, a number of the researchers’ findings did align with historic findings for telemedicine satisfaction. For instance, sufferers reported considerably greater satisfaction with in-person visits for specialty appointments. These findings are in step with prior observations, which have discovered that sufferers with advanced and critical scientific wants report larger satisfaction when they’re able to spend extra time participating with employees and care groups, equivalent to throughout an prolonged in-person go to.

Conversely, researchers noticed considerably greater satisfaction with video telemedicine for presurgical and postsurgical interventions, pushed largely by variations in satisfaction amongst orthopedic and normal surgical procedure.

“The variations we noticed could also be as a consequence of various issues: affected person expectations, how distant they’re positioned from Mayo Clinic, and extra,” says Laurie Wilshusen, Mayo Clinic’s director of Affected person Expertise Analysis and an writer on the research.

“What’s most essential to notice is that satisfaction was constantly excessive throughout each video telemedicine and in-person care, displaying that as telemedicine visits change into extra widespread, we are able to carry the Mayo Mannequin of Care to all sufferers, no matter if that is in-person or nearly,” says Wilshusen. The researchers hope their findings present goal insights into sufferers’ views on completely different care fashions, permitting for well being care programs to extra broadly take into account how video telemedicine providers could also be employed for the good thing about each sufferers and employees.