Patient satisfaction with telemedicine in home health services for the elderly

In a pilot study of telemedicine in home health services (HHS) for elderly patients, we implemented and evaluated a telemedicine system with a 33-kbs narrow-band approach to determine its effectiveness in providing quality se rvices. Fifty patients were selected for the study. We found that telemedic ine was effective in terms of reducing the number of clinic visits and achi eving patient satisfaction. The average number of clinic visits per month w as significantly decreased from 0.63 to 0.42 (p < 0.05) after the use of te lemedicine. 72% of patients were satisfied with telemedicine. but only pati ent location showed a significant difference for patient satisfaction (p < 0.05). Patients in their homes (82%) were more satisfied than patients in n ursing homes (50%). Of four types of services provided, medical consultatio n (100%) was the most highly satisfactory service with telemedicine, follow ed by physical therapy (83.3%). Although the satisfaction scores did not in dicate a significant difference in the system characteristics, the quality of verbal communication appeared to be a more important factor in influenci ng patient satisfaction than set-up time or quality of image. A computer-ba sed patient record was also developed to view a patient summary and to docu ment encounters at the patient's home. Since the system is a low-cost appro ach that is easy to interface with a notebook computer, it can support vari ous other HHSs. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.