Telemedicine and Patient Experience Ratings at an Academic Integrative Medicine Practice: An Exploratory Analysis (Preprint)

Abstract

Background: Utilization of telemedicine increased exponentially during the Covid-19 pandemic. While patient experience with telemedicine has been studied in several medical disciplines, its impact and applicability to integrative medicine practices remains unknown.

Objective: To assess the impact of visit modality, telemedicine (TELE) vs. face-to-face (F2F) encounters, on patient experience at an integrative medicine practice at a single academic medical center. Given the central role of the patient-physician relationship, therapeutic presence and touch in integrative medicine, we hypothesized that TELE would result in reduced patient experience compared to traditional, F2F encounters.

Methods: A retrospective examination of validated patient experience surveys at an academic, consultative integrative medicine practice was conducted. Surveys completed by patients >18 years old who had TELE or F2F appointments from April 1, 2020 through December 31, 2022 were included. We examined percent “top box” scores (i.e. the percentage of respondents who selected the most positive response category on the survey, “very good”), across a variety of experience metrics. ANOVA and Chi-Square analyses were completed, with a significance threshold of p-value <0.05.

Results: A total of 269 surveys were completed (74 TELE and 195 F2F). Overall, 77.7% (209/269) of respondents were female and 77.9% (209/269) were over 50 years of age. The percent top box scores across several patient experience domains did not vary significantly between the two visit modalities and, in bivariate analyses, did not seem to be related to sex or age. The “likelihood to recommend” the practice was 89.2% (66/74) following TELE encounters vs. 93.0% (177/195) after F2F visits.

Conclusions: Overall, patient experience with telemedicine is comparable to traditional, face-to-face visits, and top-level patient experience is attainable with both modalities. This data supports continued efforts to leverage telemedicine in integrative medicine settings, without significant concern that patient experience will be compromised.