Telemedicine Service Experience Questionnaire for Chinese Outpatients: Development and Validation Study

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Digital Health
• Patient Experience Measurement

Background:

• Telemedicine use has surged, but standardized patient-reported experience measures for outpatient settings are lacking.
• Existing measures often do not adequately capture the nuances of telemedicine workflows.
• This gap hinders quality assessment and improvement in digital healthcare services.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and psychometrically validate the Telemedicine Service Experience Questionnaire (TSEQ).
• To create a reliable and valid instrument for assessing Chinese outpatients' experiences with telemedicine.
• To provide a tool for evaluating and improving telemedicine service quality.

Main Methods:

• A web-based survey was conducted with 3338 Chinese outpatients who used telemedicine services.
• An adapted Chinese Patient Experience Questionnaire was used, incorporating literature reviews, workflow mapping, and expert input.
• Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were employed to evaluate the scale's structure, reliability, and validity.

Main Results:

• The final 14-item Telemedicine Service Experience Questionnaire (TSEQ) emerged with four distinct factors: "Service Efficiency," "Post-treatment," "Information Guidance," and "Humanistic Care."
• The TSEQ demonstrated excellent internal consistency (Cronbach α values ranging from 0.840 to 0.962) and high convergent validity.
• The psychometric properties indicate the TSEQ is valid and reliable for assessing telemedicine experiences among Chinese outpatients.

Conclusions:

• The Telemedicine Service Experience Questionnaire (TSEQ) is a stable, multidomain instrument with satisfactory reliability and validity for evaluating outpatient telemedicine services in China.
• The TSEQ can be utilized for routine quality monitoring and to inform targeted improvements in telemedicine workflows.
• Further research is recommended to validate the TSEQ across diverse settings and patient populations, including postpandemic samples.