Open AccessA quality improvement pathway to rapidly increase telemedicine services in a gynecologic oncology clinic during the COVID-19 pandemic with patient satisfaction scores and environmental impact
Author(s) -
Rachel Mojdehbakhsh,
Steven Rose,
Megan Peterson,
Laurel W. Rice,
Ryan Spencer
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
gynecologic oncology reports
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2352-5789
DOI - 10.1016/j.gore.2021.100708
Subject(s) - telemedicine , telehealth , documentation , medicine , pandemic , medical emergency , gynecologic oncology , covid-19 , patient satisfaction , intervention (counseling) , family medicine , nursing , health care , computer science , disease , infectious disease (medical specialty) , economics , programming language , economic growth
The primary goal was to convert 50% of all outpatient Gynecologic Oncology (GynOnc) encounters during the COVID-19 pandemic to telemedicine within one week. The secondary goal was to reach 100% documentation of telemedicine consent. The tertiary goal was to analyze patient satisfaction scores. An additional goal was to estimate CO2 emissions prevented from being produced. The period from 3/16/2020-4/15/2020 was targeted. The initial intervention involved transitioning surveillance visits. A second intervention, with nursing and advanced-practice-provider support, included transitioning additional visit types, and distributing a note template. The Telehealth Satisfaction Survey (TeSS) was administered to patients. Descriptive statistics and run charts were used to analyze and depict results. Within four weeks, there were 408 encounters; 217 were telemedicine (53.2%). Following the second intervention, 13 of 15 days (86.7%) reached the 50% telemedicine target and consent was documented in 96.6% of the telemedicine encounters. The TeSS had a 74.8% response-rate. Patients rated the following aspects of the telemedicine encounter as good or excellent: call quality (96.5%), personal comfort (92.9%), length-of-visit (94.7%), treatment explanation (93.8%), overall experience (88.5%). Moreover, 82.3% of patients would use telemedicine again. Additionally, 6.25 metric tons of CO2 emissions from travel were prevented from being produced. A GynOnc clinic can rapidly implement telemedicine systems. With multidisciplinary team planning and standardized note templates, transitioning 50% of encounters to telemedicine and achieving high rates of consent documentation were accomplished in four weeks. This increase in telemedicine represented a measurable decrease in the amount of CO2 emissions. Additionally, patients were overwhelmingly satisfied.