Patient and Care Team Perspectives of Telemedicine in Critical Access Hospitals.

Abstract

Telemedicine acute care may address issues facing critical access hospitals. This evaluation used web, mail, and telephone surveys to quantitatively and qualitatively assess patient and care team experience with telemedicine in 3 rural critical access hospitals and a large metropolitan tertiary care hospital. Results show that patients, nurses, and clinicians perceived quality of care as high, and they offered feasible recommendations to enhance communication and otherwise improve the experience. Continued work to improve, test, and publish findings on patient and care team experience with telemedicine is critical to providing quality services in often underserved communities.