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Healthcare professional and manager perceptions on drivers, benefits, and challenges of telemedicine: results from a cross-sectional survey in the Italian NHS

BACKGROUND: The Covid-19 pandemic provided new challenges and opportunities for patients and healthcare providers while accelerating the trend of digital healthcare transformation. This study explores the perspectives of healthcare professionals and managers on (i) drivers to the implementation of t...

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Autores principales: Antonacci, Grazia, Benevento, Elisabetta, Bonavitacola, Sveva, Cannavacciuolo, Lorella, Foglia, Emanuela, Fusi, Giulia, Garagiola, Elisabetta, Ponsiglione, Cristina, Stefanini, Alessandro
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10585875/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37853448
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-023-10100-x
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author Antonacci, Grazia
Benevento, Elisabetta
Bonavitacola, Sveva
Cannavacciuolo, Lorella
Foglia, Emanuela
Fusi, Giulia
Garagiola, Elisabetta
Ponsiglione, Cristina
Stefanini, Alessandro
author_facet Antonacci, Grazia
Benevento, Elisabetta
Bonavitacola, Sveva
Cannavacciuolo, Lorella
Foglia, Emanuela
Fusi, Giulia
Garagiola, Elisabetta
Ponsiglione, Cristina
Stefanini, Alessandro
author_sort Antonacci, Grazia
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The Covid-19 pandemic provided new challenges and opportunities for patients and healthcare providers while accelerating the trend of digital healthcare transformation. This study explores the perspectives of healthcare professionals and managers on (i) drivers to the implementation of telemedicine services and (ii) perceived benefits and challenges related to the use of telemedicine across the Italian National Health Service. METHODS: An online cross-sectional survey was distributed to professionals working within 308 healthcare organisations in different Italian regions. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected through a self-administered questionnaire (June-September 2021). Responses were analysed using summary statistics and thematic analysis. RESULTS: Key factors driving the adoption of telemedicine have been grouped into (i) organisational drivers (reduce the virus spread-80%; enhance care quality and efficiency-61%), (ii) technological drivers (ease of use-82%; efficacy and reliability-64%; compliance with data governance regulations-64%) and (iii) regulatory drivers (regulations’ semplification-84%). Nearly all respondents perceive telemedicine as useful in improving patient care (96%). The main benefits reported by respondents are shorter waiting lists, reduced Emergency Department attendance, decreased patient and clinician travel, and more frequent patient-doctor interactions. However, only 7% of respondents believe that telemedicine services are more effective than traditional care and 66% of the healthcare professionals believe that telemedicine can’t completely substitute in-person visits due to challenges with physical examination and patient-doctor relationships. Other reported challenges include poor quality and interoperability of telemedicine platforms and scarce integration of telemedicine with traditional care services. Moreover, healthcare professionals believe that some groups of patients experience difficulties in accessing and using the technologies due to socio-cultural factors, technological and linguistic challenges and the absence of caregivers. CONCLUSIONS: Respondents believe that telemedicine can be useful to complement and augment traditional care. However, many challenges still need to be overcome to fully consider telemedicine a standard of care. Strategies that could help address these challenges include additional regulations on data governance and reimbursements, evidence-based guidelines for the use of telemedicine, greater integration of tools and processes, patient-centred training for clinicians, patient-facing material to assist patients in navigating virtual sessions, different language options, and greater involvement of caregivers in the care process. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12913-023-10100-x.
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spelling pubmed-105858752023-10-20 Healthcare professional and manager perceptions on drivers, benefits, and challenges of telemedicine: results from a cross-sectional survey in the Italian NHS Antonacci, Grazia Benevento, Elisabetta Bonavitacola, Sveva Cannavacciuolo, Lorella Foglia, Emanuela Fusi, Giulia Garagiola, Elisabetta Ponsiglione, Cristina Stefanini, Alessandro BMC Health Serv Res Research BACKGROUND: The Covid-19 pandemic provided new challenges and opportunities for patients and healthcare providers while accelerating the trend of digital healthcare transformation. This study explores the perspectives of healthcare professionals and managers on (i) drivers to the implementation of telemedicine services and (ii) perceived benefits and challenges related to the use of telemedicine across the Italian National Health Service. METHODS: An online cross-sectional survey was distributed to professionals working within 308 healthcare organisations in different Italian regions. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected through a self-administered questionnaire (June-September 2021). Responses were analysed using summary statistics and thematic analysis. RESULTS: Key factors driving the adoption of telemedicine have been grouped into (i) organisational drivers (reduce the virus spread-80%; enhance care quality and efficiency-61%), (ii) technological drivers (ease of use-82%; efficacy and reliability-64%; compliance with data governance regulations-64%) and (iii) regulatory drivers (regulations’ semplification-84%). Nearly all respondents perceive telemedicine as useful in improving patient care (96%). The main benefits reported by respondents are shorter waiting lists, reduced Emergency Department attendance, decreased patient and clinician travel, and more frequent patient-doctor interactions. However, only 7% of respondents believe that telemedicine services are more effective than traditional care and 66% of the healthcare professionals believe that telemedicine can’t completely substitute in-person visits due to challenges with physical examination and patient-doctor relationships. Other reported challenges include poor quality and interoperability of telemedicine platforms and scarce integration of telemedicine with traditional care services. Moreover, healthcare professionals believe that some groups of patients experience difficulties in accessing and using the technologies due to socio-cultural factors, technological and linguistic challenges and the absence of caregivers. CONCLUSIONS: Respondents believe that telemedicine can be useful to complement and augment traditional care. However, many challenges still need to be overcome to fully consider telemedicine a standard of care. Strategies that could help address these challenges include additional regulations on data governance and reimbursements, evidence-based guidelines for the use of telemedicine, greater integration of tools and processes, patient-centred training for clinicians, patient-facing material to assist patients in navigating virtual sessions, different language options, and greater involvement of caregivers in the care process. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12913-023-10100-x. BioMed Central 2023-10-18 /pmc/articles/PMC10585875/ /pubmed/37853448 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-023-10100-x Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Antonacci, Grazia
Benevento, Elisabetta
Bonavitacola, Sveva
Cannavacciuolo, Lorella
Foglia, Emanuela
Fusi, Giulia
Garagiola, Elisabetta
Ponsiglione, Cristina
Stefanini, Alessandro
Healthcare professional and manager perceptions on drivers, benefits, and challenges of telemedicine: results from a cross-sectional survey in the Italian NHS
title Healthcare professional and manager perceptions on drivers, benefits, and challenges of telemedicine: results from a cross-sectional survey in the Italian NHS
title_full Healthcare professional and manager perceptions on drivers, benefits, and challenges of telemedicine: results from a cross-sectional survey in the Italian NHS
title_fullStr Healthcare professional and manager perceptions on drivers, benefits, and challenges of telemedicine: results from a cross-sectional survey in the Italian NHS
title_full_unstemmed Healthcare professional and manager perceptions on drivers, benefits, and challenges of telemedicine: results from a cross-sectional survey in the Italian NHS
title_short Healthcare professional and manager perceptions on drivers, benefits, and challenges of telemedicine: results from a cross-sectional survey in the Italian NHS
title_sort healthcare professional and manager perceptions on drivers, benefits, and challenges of telemedicine: results from a cross-sectional survey in the italian nhs
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10585875/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37853448
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-023-10100-x
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