DNP Scholarly Projects

Abstract

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the use of synchronous telemedicine in oncology. While telemedicine can increase access to care, decrease care costs, and reduce hospitalizations, patients’ satisfaction with telemedicine is critical to telemedicine’s sustainability. However, limited research exists on telemedicine use and patients' satisfaction in oncology. The scholarly project had a quality improvement design that determined the factors affecting patients' satisfaction using secondary data from patients' satisfaction surveys. Using the Donabedian Structure, Process, Outcomes Model as a framework, the project involved three general hematology-oncology clinics at a large urban, academic medical center. Three-hundred ninety-four patient satisfaction surveys with at least one comment from April 2020 to September 2021 were analyzed, which yielded 665 comments to provide context. Surveys with no comments were excluded from the analysis.

The independent variables were age, race, and gender. The dependent variables were ease of scheduling, therapeutic communication by the care providers, audio/video quality, and the overall assessment of telemedicine use. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) evaluated the differences in the mean scores with age and race. An independent t-test assessed the mean scores for gender. A statistical difference existed between age groups in the satisfaction scores regarding ease of scheduling and audio/video quality of telemedicine. In race or gender, neither the one-way ANOVA nor the independent t-test demonstrated any statistical significance in satisfaction scores. The analysis of the comments guided the quality improvement recommendations. The recommendations to positively impact patient satisfaction with the oncology clinic telemedicine workflow were: Build adequate systems capabilities and clinic infrastructure; establish workflow and evaluate staff resources; provide resources for patients and providers by creating a telemedicine champion; leverage community resources and partnerships; assess the patient population; evaluate rules and regulations. The sustainability of synchronous telemedicine will depend on many factors, including patient satisfaction. Because patient satisfaction is crucial to clinical outcomes and reimbursements, it will continue to play a vital role in the sustainability of many initiatives in healthcare in today’s healthcare landscape.

Keywords: telemedicine, synchronous telemedicine, patient satisfaction

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Date

Spring 4-27-2022

First Advisor

Dr. Linda Wofford

Second Advisor

Dr. David Phillippi

Scholarly Project Team Member

Dr. Heather Jackson

Scholarly Project Team Member

Ms. Sara Hanai

Department

Nursing, School of

College

Health Sciences & Nursing, Gordon E. Inman College of

Document Type

Scholarly Project

Degree

Doctorate of Nursing Practice (DNP)

Degree Level

Doctoral

Degree Grantor

Belmont University

Keywords

telemedicine; synchronous telemedicine; patients' satisfaction; quality improvement project

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