Impact of Postoperative Virtual versus In-Person Surgical Visits on Patient Satisfaction: A Prospective Multi-Surgeon, Within-Surgeon Comparative Study
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Melanie J Wang1, Kuanwong Watcharotone2, Mike Scheuber2
1Department of Surgery, Section of Plastic Surgery, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
Purpose:
Telemedicine is widely used in surgical outpatient care, but satisfaction comparisons are often confounded by between-surgeon differences. We compared patient satisfaction between virtual and in-person surgical visits using a within-surgeon design.
Methods:
We conducted a prospective multi-provider cohort study of outpatient surgical encounters from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2025. Patient experience was measured using a standardized Press Ganey outpatient/telemedicine survey. Two prespecified analyses were performed: (1) a provider-level matched analysis comparing in-person and virtual visits within the same provider, and (2) a patient-level (visit-level) analysis comparing all eligible encounters by modality. The primary outcome was overall rating of care; secondary outcomes included likelihood to recommend and item-level experience domains.
Results:
Overall, 31,640 patients and 183 providers were included. In the Section of Plastic Surgery (29 providers; 5,284 in-person and 610 virtual visits), overall satisfaction and likelihood to recommend did not differ by visit modality in provider-matched or visit-level analyses (all p>0.05). Across the Department of Surgery (154 providers), provider-matched analyses similarly showed no significant differences in overall rating of care or likelihood to recommend. In visit-level analyses, in-person visits had slightly higher overall rating of care and likelihood to recommend, though absolute differences were small. Item-level analyses demonstrated consistently high ratings for virtual visits, particularly for communication, engagement, and access.
Conclusions:
Virtual surgical visits were associated with similarly high patient satisfaction scores to in-person visits. In addition, there were no significant differences in measured patient experience domains between virtual and in-person visits. This study supports telemedicine as a valuable component of routine surgical outpatient practice.