Applied techniques for putting pre-visit planning in clinical practice to empower patient-centered care in the pandemic era: a systematic review and framework suggestion

BACKGROUND: One of the main elements of patient-centered care is an enhancement of patient preparedness. Thus, pre-visit planning assessment tools was emerged to prepare and involve patients in their treatment process. OBJECTIVE: The main objective of this article was to review the applied tools and techniques for consideration of putting pre-visit planning into practice. METHODS: Web of Science, Scopus, IEEE, and PubMed databases were searched using keywords from January 2001 to November 2020. The review was completed according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses checklist. Then, qualitative analysis was done to suggest an appropriate framework by mapping the main concepts. RESULTS: Out of 385 citations were retrieved in initial database searches, 49 studies from ten countries were included. Applied pre-visit techniques can be classified into eight categories. Our results showed that almost 81% of studies were related to procedures that were done between each visit, while 42% of articles were related to before visits. Accordingly, the main approach of included articles was patient preparedness. While 38 studies reported this approach is effective, three studies reported the effectiveness of such tools as moderate, only two articles believed it had a low effect on improving patient-centered care. CONCLUSION: This survey summarized the characteristics of published studies on pre-visit planning in the proposed framework. This approach could enhance the quality of patient care alongside enhancement patient-provider communication. However, such an approach can also be helpful to control pandemic diseases by reducing unnecessary referrals. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12913-021-06456-7.