Telemedicine, a potentially disruptive innovation, has emerged as an indispensable pathway to provide continued health care services and improvise public health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Following the global appearance of the coronavirus, health care providers began postponing several routines, elective care, and outpatient services due to extensive deployment of medical resources in the treatment of patients and to decrease the risk of virus transmission. Another consequence is that face-to-face consultations were disrupted because of hesitation in consulting physicians in the hospital setting. As discussed in an article about patients’ satisfaction and experience with telemedicine that was published in the December 2021 issue of the journal Telemedicine and e-Health, partial or complete disruption of health care services for non-COVID diseases in many countries involved hypertension; diabetes and diabetes-related complications; cancer screening and treatment; cardiovascular emergencies; and rehabilitation. The most common reasons cited for disruption of health care services were lack of health workers’ availability, diversion of health workers to COVID-19 management, cancellation of planned treatments, and risk of virus transmission during on-site patient visits.
Telemedicine became a useful alternative towards streamlined response to the pandemic. Per the WHO, this modality is defined as the delivery of health care services by health care professionals using technology entailing the exchange of medical information for the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of diseases and injuries. It includes synchronous mode (e.g., video visits, audio visits), asynchronous mode (e.g., emails), and remote monitoring of patients. Researchers sought to identify relevant studies published between December 2019 and August 2020 that highlighted patients’ satisfaction and experience with the use of telemedicine during the pandemic. The findings based upon 48,144 surveyed patients and 146 providers in 12 different countries revealed high satisfaction with virtual encounters across a spectrum of diseases. Telemedicine was found satisfactory on various outcome measures, such as addressing patients’ concerns, communication with health care providers, usefulness, and reliability. Most common advantages were time saved due to lesser traveling and waiting time, better accessibility, convenience, and cost efficiency. Age and sex did not have any significant impacts on satisfaction levels. Physicians and patients both showed a strong preference for continued usage and agreed upon telemedicine's potential to complement the regular health care services even after the pandemic.