Telemedicine for the pediatric preoperative assessment during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evaluating patient and provider satisfaction

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented unprecedented challenges in delivering healthcare to surgical patients. To avoid delays in patient care while still minimizing COVID-19 infection risk to patients and providers, anesthesiology preoperative clinics were presented with the opportunity to implement telemedicine to assess patients’ risks prior to surgery. This study explores patient and provider satisfaction with video-based telemedicine preoperative clinic visits during the COVID-19 pandemic via a patient and provider satisfaction survey. A vast majority (>93%) of patients expressed overall satisfaction with telemedicine visits. Similarly, >85% of providers agreed with the benefits of and expressed overall satisfaction with the preoperative telemedicine visits. Overall, patient and provider study participants had positive feedback in response to anesthesia preoperative telemedicine visits. Future studies could assess the preference of telemedicine to in-person visits once the fears of COVID-19 spread have been mitigated, as well as an assessment of outcomes comparing telemedicine and in-person visits.