Background: The use of telehealth steadily increases as it has become a viable modality to patient care. Early adopters attempt to use telehealth to deliver high-quality care. Patient satisfaction is a key indicator of how well the telemedicine modality met patient expectations.
Objective: The objective of this systematic review and narrative analysis is to explore the association of telehealth and patient satisfaction in regards to effectiveness and efficiency.
Methods: Boolean expressions between keywords created a complex search string. Variations of this string were used in Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature and MEDLINE.
Results: 2193 articles were filtered and assessed for suitability (n=44). Factors relating to effectiveness and efficiency were identified using consensus. The factors listed most often were improved outcomes (20%), preferred modality (10%), ease of use (9%), low cost 8%), improved communication (8%) and decreased travel time (7%), which in total accounted for 61% of occurrences.
Conclusion: This review identified a variety of factors of association between telehealth and patient satisfaction. Knowledge of these factors could help implementers to match interventions as solutions to specific problems.
Keywords: access; home telehealth.; patient quality; patient satisfaction; quality; telecommunications; telehealth; telemedicine.
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