Telehealth for Cancer Care During COVID-19: Patient Satisfaction Trends Over Time

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVE(S): COVID-19 has dramatically increased telehealth utilization for cancer care delivery. We hypothesized that patient satisfaction scores following virtual visits may improve over time as patients and physicians become more accustomed to a virtual platform. To evaluate this, we compared virtual visit patient satisfaction scores between early and late pandemic visits at a comprehensive cancer center. MATERIALS/METHODS: Anonymized patient surveys from all virtual visit (VV) and in-person visits (IP) collected between April 2020 through January 2021 were included. Surveys consisted of 12 questions assessing the following aspects of the patient experience: connection quality, patient-physician communication, and overall provider quality. Open-ended questions (2/12) were excluded. Qualitative responses were given on a 1-3 Likert-type scale ranging from no, yes (somewhat), and yes (definitely). Surveys were grouped into early-pandemic (April 2020 - July 2020) and late-pandemic (August 2020 - January 2021). Responses were binned into satisfied (yes, [definitely] responses) and not satisfied (no and yes [somewhat] responses). Patient characteristics and survey responses for early and late pandemic were compared using a chi-square or independent t-test with significance set at P < 0.05. RESULTS: In total, 1,688 VV (45% early and 55% late pandemic) and 5,279 IP (39% early and 61% late pandemic) surveys were assessed. VV surveys were from the following specialties: 69% medical oncology, 13% surgical oncology, 12% radiation oncology, and 6% gynecologic oncology. The age distribution of VV patients was ≤49 (16%), 50-64 (28%), and ≥65 (56%) years compared to ≤49 (16%), 50-64 (32%), and ≥65 (52%) for IP patients. Survey response rates were 41% and 42% for VV and IP patients, respectively. Compared to early pandemic VV patients, late pandemic VV patients were more satisfied with regard to quality of explanation (91% vs 80%, P < .001), provider preparedness (89% vs 81%, P < 0.001), patient-provider trust (93% vs 87%, P < 0.001), provider listening (94% vs 86%, P < 0.001), follow-up instructions (85% vs 76%, P < 0.001), connection ease (83% vs 71%, P < 0.001), connection quality (85% vs 72%, P < 0.001), and appointment timing (84% vs 66%, P < 0.001). There was no significant difference between early and late pandemic for overall provider rating (mean [SD], 1-10 scale: 9.52 [1.45] vs. 9.58 [1.29], P = 0.36) or whether the patient would recommend the provider (94.6% vs. 92.3%, P = 0.10). In contrast, no significant differences were observed in patient survey scores between early and late pandemic for IP visits. CONCLUSION: Patients who had virtual visits were significantly more satisfied on multiple aspects of their encounter later in the pandemic compared with earlier while no significant differences were observed for in-person visits. Understanding the underlying reasons will be important for optimizing the virtual patient experience, which is likely to remain a common way of “seeing” patients.