Positive Experiences

• Telehealth in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) care is welcomed by patients and their caregivers (2020).
• For patients, telehealth virtual video visits (VVVs) may provide more effective follow-up and convenience compared with traditional office visits (2019).
• Telehealth in Plastic Surgery healthcare allows real-time decision-making, providing patients and nurses access to providers, and decreasing the need for patient transportation and waiting time. The great majority of patients showed satisfaction with telehealth (2019).
• In Parkinson's Disease (PD), patients and providers generally think of telehealth as something favorable (2018).
• A large health system implemented an enterprise telehealth video visit program across a range of clinical specialties showing a positive patient experience. Patients found it easier to get healthcare while saving time (2018).
• In cancer survivors, telehealth interventions provide independence and reassurance (2017).
• A review identified a variety of factors of association between telehealth and patient satisfaction. Knowledge of these factors could help to improve future telehealth interventions (2017).
• Patients identified convenience, efficiency, communication, privacy, and comfort as domains as keys to consider Primary Care Video Visits (PCVVs) compared to in-person encounters (2017).
• Patients show high satisfaction with telehealth experience, mostly referring to the convenience and quality of healthcare (2016).
• An evaluation of the utility of telehealth video visits in men with treated prostate cancer, compared to office visits shows that video visits were associated with similar efficiency, satisfaction, and lower costs compared to office visits. Thus, telehealth video visits may have a future in healthcare (2015).
• Telehealth for children with developmental disabilities (DD) is a more effective clinical process than office-based healthcare. Parents showed a high level of satisfaction. Benefits include: decreased child and parents stress and increased likelihood of a successful medical examination due to greater cooperation by the child (2015).
• Telehealth has been shown to be an effective and accepted method in prisoner medical care (2010).
• There is high telehealth patient satisfaction among specialties.
• Other telehealth PROs.

Negative Experiences

• ALS healthcare professionals showed mixed experiences and perceived barriers to telehealth use (2020).
• Some obstacles to overcome for a better telehealth patient acceptance were identified: lack of access to smartphones or camera-equipped computers (29%), lack of confidence in safety and security (29%), lack of technical knowledge for connection (28%), lack of robust and reliable access to mobile data and cell services (26%), lack of robust and reliable access to the internet (26%), and concern about the quality of care provided (20%) (2019).
• Face-to-face VVVs interactions may be preferred in some circumstances by patients or clinicians (2019).
• Individual experiences in PD telehealth are dependent on technical issues (2018).
• Some telehealth experiences see no substitute for a personal relationship with a trusted physician (2018).
• Contradictions of Telehealth User Experience was found in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. For example, there are differences between patients’ and health professionals’ views and experiences of telehealth, with patients being more positive about telehealth than health professionals (2015).
• Other telehealth CONs.

Challenges

• In ALS healthcare, challenges related to financing and legislation may limit telehealth implementation. Future research should report the barriers, the facilitators of implementation, and determine telehealth cost-effectiveness (2020).
• Opportunities exist to expand the types of telehealth services and the number of telehealth sessions, including the expansion of services in new specialty areas, updating telehealth equipment to streamline workflows and increase convenience and uptake, as well as integrating novel technologies (2019).
• Satisfaction and effectiveness of PD remote care will increase as technical problems are fixed (2018).
• Future studies should explore which patients and conditions are best suited for PCVVs (2017).
• Future telehealth interventions in cancer survivors need to be developed in collaboration with a broad range of cancer survivors to improve engagement and benefit (2017).
• Available asynchronous telehealth technology may be superior in some situations, allowing the intervention to be performed at a speed that can be adjusted to the DD child's needs. More research using asynchronous telehealth for DD children and youth, and challenging behaviors, would be needed (2015).
• Users need to be involved in all processes of technology and service development, for a successful telehealth implementation (2015).
• A Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease case study suggests the inclusion of potential users at an earlier stage of telehealth/service development (2015).

Strategy