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Feasibility and Acceptability of Clinical Pediatric Telerehabilitation Services
Kelly Tanner1, Rachel Bican1, Jamie Boster1
1Division of Clinical Therapies, Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, Ohio, USA.
Insights
Pediatric telerehabilitation is feasible and acceptable to families, maintaining high satisfaction rates post-implementation. This approach improved access to essential therapies during the pandemic.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric healthcare delivery
- Rehabilitation medicine
- Telehealth technologies
Background:
- Telerehabilitation offers potential for pediatric services but faced barriers like cost and access.
- The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of telerehabilitation for continuous care delivery.
- Previous barriers limited the widespread implementation of pediatric telerehabilitation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess the feasibility and acceptability of pediatric telerehabilitation services.
- To present clinical data on speech-language pathology, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and sports/orthopedic therapy delivered via telerehabilitation.
- To evaluate the impact of rapid telerehabilitation implementation in a pediatric hospital setting.
Main Methods:
- Telerehabilitation services were implemented in three stages: foundation building, implementation, and refinement.
- Patient satisfaction surveys, initially paper-based, were adapted for online administration.
- Outpatient visit data (in-person, phone, video) were extracted from electronic medical records.
Main Results:
- Patient satisfaction remained high, with 97.73% positive responses for telerehabilitation, comparable to pre-pandemic rates (98.97%).
- Patient volume recovered to 73.5% of pre-pandemic levels after implementing telerehabilitation.
- The study demonstrated sustained family acceptance of telerehabilitation services.
Conclusions:
- Pediatric telerehabilitation is a feasible and acceptable model for clinical settings.
- The findings support the continued use of telerehabilitation in pediatric care.
- Further research is required to evaluate the impact on patient outcomes and long-term applications.
Objective:
Telerehabilitation has long been recognized as a promising means of providing pediatric services; however, significant barriers such as cost, payor reimbursement, and access prevented widespread use. The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated rapid adoption of telerehabilitation into clinical practice to provide access to care while maintaining social distancing. The purpose of this study is to present clinical data on the feasibility and acceptability of speech-language pathology, developmental occupational and physical therapies, and sports and orthopedic therapies telerehabilitation delivered in a pediatric hospital setting.
Methods:
Telerehabilitation services were rapidly implemented in three stages: building the foundation, implementing, and refining this service delivery model. Paper patient satisfaction surveys were administered as part of ongoing quality improvement efforts throughout 2019 and were adapted for online administration in 2020 for telerehabilitation patients. Outpatient visit counts by type (in-person, phone, and video) were extracted from the electronic medical record using data warehousing techniques.
Results:
Historical patient satisfaction rates from 2019 indicated high patient satisfaction (98.97% positive responses); these results were maintained for telerehabilitation visits (97.73%), indicating that families found telerehabilitation services acceptable. Patient volume returned to 73.5% of pre-pandemic volume after the implementation of telerehabilitation services.
Conclusions:
Pediatric telerehabilitation is feasible to provide in clinical settings, and the services are acceptable to patient families. Future work is needed to evaluate the impact of telerehabilitation services on patient care and applications for ongoing use of this delivery model.
