Patient satisfaction with telemedicine in acute care setting: A systematic review

BACKGROUND: Telemedicine has revolutionized health-care services with its unprecedented abilities to connect patients with health-care professional across the distances. Patient satisfaction is an important measure of the quality and effectiveness of health-care services. AIM: The goal of this systematic review is to investigate patient satisfaction with telemedicine in acute care setting. METHODS AND RESULTS: Four sources of data were searched PubMed, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Scopus, and Web of Science. We used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis as our basis of organization. Our analysis has showed that acute telemedicine was effective in managing a broad spectrum of acute medical conditions while achieving high levels of patient satisfaction. CONCLUSION: Patient satisfaction is a complex product of expectations and experiences. Furthermore, it is an important indicator of the quality of the service. Despite the challenging nature of acute medicine, telemedicine services were successful in improving the quality of the service and achieving high levels of patient satisfaction. RELEVANCE FOR PATIENTS: Telemedicine is rapidly evolving as an essential component of our healthcare system. Implementing telemedicine in acute care is a relatively new concept and patient satisfaction in these settings needs to be evaluated.