Patient satisfaction with telemedicine in a prison environment

Prison inmates were surveyed about their perceptions of the use of videocon ferencing in clinical consultations. A 14-item questionnaire was used to as sess satisfaction with the patient-physician clinical interaction. Of the 2 99 inmates surveyed immediately after their teleconsultations, 221 complete d questionnaires that were suitable for analysis (74%). Only 9% of patients indicated that they were not satisfied with the teleconsultation. They rat ed the telemedicine context well above the midpoint of the scale (16) on bo th an information-exchange and a patient-comfort dimension, with means of 2 9 and 24, respectively. There was a significant difference (P<0.01) in the patient-comfort dimension in terms of the location of the prisoners. No sig nificant differences were found in patient satisfaction related to the spec ialty of the physician. The results suggest that many contextual factors mu st be considered to understand the communicative implications of patient sa tisfaction with telemedicine.