COVID-19 patients’ satisfaction with quality of medical care provided in the form of telemedicine consultations

Abstract

The paper reports the results of survey carried out in order to assess patients’ opinion on the remote medical care provided by the telemedicine center of theDepartment of health of Moscow during the pandemic. Survey of 216 COVID-19 patients who received outpatient care made it possible to assess their healthcondition and determine the factors contributing to satisfaction with care provided. Patients’ health condition was evaluated based on the course of underlyingdisease and comorbidities, which were revealed in 24.3% of COVID-19 patients. The following three groups were formed: patients with favorable (37.5%),satisfactory (36.7%) and unfavorable (25.8%) health condition. The majority of patients (76.4%) were satisfied with telemedicine consultations; men (79.8%),individuals with favorable condition (83.1%) and patients under 50 (81.9%) demonstrated significantly higher level of satisfaction. The following arguments in favourof telemedicine consultations were specified by patients: appointment of the specialist’s consultation, promptness of treatment appointment, provision of medicalrecommendations, including recommendations on a healthy lifestyle, as well as promptness of house call and ambulance call. The main dissatisfaction reasons wereas follows: lack of appropriate equipment, difficulties when setting up the equipment, complexity of the instructions for connecting to telemedicine consultations,poor quality of video/audio conferencing; these indicated the patients’ inadequate technical resources. Telemedicine consultations may be considered an effectivemethod of outpatient care provision for COVID-19 patients, especially since 64.7% of patients plan to use telemedicine consultations in the future, and 72.3% ofpatients are ready to recommend them to others.