Darren Chen: Overall, Patients Were Satisfied With Ophthalmic Video Visits

A majority of patients with ophthalmic video visits were satisfied, but there were some predictors that contributed to which patients were more satisfied, explained Darren Chen, MD student at Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences.

Transcript

What is patient experience like with ophthalmic video visits?

Overall, the patients that responded to our questionnaire, we found the majority felt very satisfied with their video visits, actually. I think there's like an implicit understanding between the provider and the patient as to what exactly the limits to telemedicine are. Namely, that you won't be able to get a really great exam at the slit lamp or to look at the retina.

So, visual issues can come from a variety of different sources, some benign, such as dry eye. And these are sort of the more non–vision-threatening issues that can be addressed well through video visits and lead to increased efficiency and increased patient throughput through the clinic.

And, it's very effective, especially for triaging patients, so that those with vision-threatening issues know that they need to come into the clinic as soon as possible, whereas those with non–vision-threatening issues can probably be followed up through video visits in the future.

Are there any factors in ophthalmic video visits that contributed to which patients were more satisfied with their video visits?

The number 1 predictor for satisfaction for video visits was how the patients felt about their ophthalmologists. So, what we found was that how the patients perceived the skillfulness and thoroughness of the ophthalmologist was probably the most important part.

So, this probably implies that video visits work best when patients have an established relationship already with an ophthalmologist. So, they've already developed this rapport that can be easily translated to video.

And then the other most important factors that we saw were that there's a decreased wait time with video visits, and also, if the patients were satisfied with how long that their appointment went on for, they were more satisfied with their visits.