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Patients’ Perception of Telemedicine in a Large Urban Inner-City Emergency Department: A Cross-Sectional Survey

Introduction Telemedicine has the potential to ease emergency department (ED) overcrowding, improve ED throughput, and decrease the cost of medical care. Much of the current knowledge of telemedicine systems focuses on bringing more specialty care to the ED or improving access in rural areas. Limite...

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Autores principales: Sechrist, Eric, Dong, Fanglong, Lee, Carol, Chon, Kaitlin, Neeki, Arianna, Winston, Lori, Borger, Rodney, Neeki, Michael M
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cureus 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7681748/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33240689
http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.11091
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author Sechrist, Eric
Dong, Fanglong
Lee, Carol
Chon, Kaitlin
Neeki, Arianna
Winston, Lori
Borger, Rodney
Neeki, Michael M
author_facet Sechrist, Eric
Dong, Fanglong
Lee, Carol
Chon, Kaitlin
Neeki, Arianna
Winston, Lori
Borger, Rodney
Neeki, Michael M
author_sort Sechrist, Eric
collection PubMed
description Introduction Telemedicine has the potential to ease emergency department (ED) overcrowding, improve ED throughput, and decrease the cost of medical care. Much of the current knowledge of telemedicine systems focuses on bringing more specialty care to the ED or improving access in rural areas. Limited research exists on patients’ perception of telemedicine in an urban ED. Methods A survey exploring perceptions of telemedicine encounters was distributed to both providers and patients following mirrored encounters between October 2015 and August 2016. Chi-square analysis was conducted to identify associations between factors and openness to telemedicine from the patients’ perspective. Results A total of 174 patients were included in the analysis. Factors associated with patient willingness to try telemedicine included: having access to a tablet with internet (p=0.0023), having access to a tablet with camera (p=0.0025), having downloaded apps in the past (p=0.0028), having used an app in the past (p<0.0001), and had frequent video chat in the past (p=0.0142). Conclusion With widespread access to smartphones with internet connectivity and pressing demands for healthcare services, telemedicine may provide a potential solution to low acuity medical care needs.
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spelling pubmed-76817482020-11-24 Patients’ Perception of Telemedicine in a Large Urban Inner-City Emergency Department: A Cross-Sectional Survey Sechrist, Eric Dong, Fanglong Lee, Carol Chon, Kaitlin Neeki, Arianna Winston, Lori Borger, Rodney Neeki, Michael M Cureus Emergency Medicine Introduction Telemedicine has the potential to ease emergency department (ED) overcrowding, improve ED throughput, and decrease the cost of medical care. Much of the current knowledge of telemedicine systems focuses on bringing more specialty care to the ED or improving access in rural areas. Limited research exists on patients’ perception of telemedicine in an urban ED. Methods A survey exploring perceptions of telemedicine encounters was distributed to both providers and patients following mirrored encounters between October 2015 and August 2016. Chi-square analysis was conducted to identify associations between factors and openness to telemedicine from the patients’ perspective. Results A total of 174 patients were included in the analysis. Factors associated with patient willingness to try telemedicine included: having access to a tablet with internet (p=0.0023), having access to a tablet with camera (p=0.0025), having downloaded apps in the past (p=0.0028), having used an app in the past (p<0.0001), and had frequent video chat in the past (p=0.0142). Conclusion With widespread access to smartphones with internet connectivity and pressing demands for healthcare services, telemedicine may provide a potential solution to low acuity medical care needs. Cureus 2020-10-22 /pmc/articles/PMC7681748/ /pubmed/33240689 http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.11091 Text en Copyright © 2020, Sechrist et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Emergency Medicine
Sechrist, Eric
Dong, Fanglong
Lee, Carol
Chon, Kaitlin
Neeki, Arianna
Winston, Lori
Borger, Rodney
Neeki, Michael M
Patients’ Perception of Telemedicine in a Large Urban Inner-City Emergency Department: A Cross-Sectional Survey
title Patients’ Perception of Telemedicine in a Large Urban Inner-City Emergency Department: A Cross-Sectional Survey
title_full Patients’ Perception of Telemedicine in a Large Urban Inner-City Emergency Department: A Cross-Sectional Survey
title_fullStr Patients’ Perception of Telemedicine in a Large Urban Inner-City Emergency Department: A Cross-Sectional Survey
title_full_unstemmed Patients’ Perception of Telemedicine in a Large Urban Inner-City Emergency Department: A Cross-Sectional Survey
title_short Patients’ Perception of Telemedicine in a Large Urban Inner-City Emergency Department: A Cross-Sectional Survey
title_sort patients’ perception of telemedicine in a large urban inner-city emergency department: a cross-sectional survey
topic Emergency Medicine
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7681748/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33240689
http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.11091
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