Initial Experience with Telemedicine at a Single Institution

Several studies have documented the efficacy of and patient satisfaction with video visits in place of face-to-face encounters. We evaluated patient satisfaction by diagnosis and determined whether specific urological diagnoses are more amenable to being managed via remote encounters. A secondary objective was to evaluate patient satisfaction according to patient age and distance from the clinic.

We conducted a retrospective review of 611 consecutive telemedicine encounters at an urban academic urology practice between October 2015 and December 2016. Patients rated their provider and the videoconference platform on a Likert scale of 1 to 5. Spearman's correlation coefficient was used to correlate age and distance with satisfaction. ANOVA testing was used to determine significant difference in patient satisfaction based on diagnosis.

A total of 289 patients (47.2%) completed the survey. Mean patient age was 54.4 years (range 18 to 89) and mean patient distance to the practice was 44.6 miles (range 0.4 to 327.0). Mean patient-provider satisfaction rating was 4.94 (SD 0.32) and mean system satisfaction was 4.63 (SD 0.97). Significant negative correlation was found between age and patient-system satisfaction (CC -0.15, p=0.025) with no significant correlation between satisfaction and distance. ANOVA testing revealed no significant difference in system satisfaction or provider satisfaction across primary diagnoses.

Video visits can be used across a wide variety of diagnoses with high patient satisfaction regardless of distance from a facility. Patient satisfaction with their provider is high regardless of diagnosis but satisfaction with system use may be more variable.