Research: Shopper satisfaction varies with telehealth choices

The J.D. Energy 2024 U.S. Telehealth Satisfaction Research launched on Thursday exhibits a slight lower, down 1% from final 12 months, in affected person satisfaction with direct-to-consumer telehealth suppliers and a considerable enhance, up 18%, in satisfaction with payer-provided telehealth choices. 

The examine, based mostly on 4,070 healthcare shoppers’ responses inside the previous 12 months, measures sufferers’ satisfaction with telehealth companies based mostly on seven elements: ease of receiving care, digital channels, whether or not a supplier met their wants, degree of belief, scheduling appointments, folks, and saving time or cash.

It finds that 65% of survey respondents mentioned the highest cause for utilizing telehealth is comfort, with 46% saying they used it as a result of potential to obtain care shortly and 30% attributable to having a situation that is coated through a telehealth go to. 

The examine famous a tie between problem with web/mobile connectivity (25%) and restricted companies offered (25%) as being the highest boundaries to shoppers receiving telehealth, and 15% mentioned they’d knowledge safety issues with private/medical data.

Shoppers famous they like telehealth for medicine assessment and power care follow-up.

Virtually one-third (74%) of shoppers who had a optimistic expertise with medicine assessment mentioned they might use the service once more. As compared, solely 58% of these with a problematic expertise mentioned they might use telehealth once more.   

Forty-four p.c of telehealth sufferers with power situations who had a simple expertise mentioned they might use the service once more. In distinction, 28% of those that had a damaging expertise mentioned they might use telehealth once more. 

Sufferers coated by Medicaid, Gen Y and Gen Z people, and people residing in city environments had the very best total satisfaction with digital care suppliers.

Medicaid sufferers and people privately insured, together with child boomers, older generations, and people residing in suburban environments, had the bottom satisfaction with telehealth suppliers. 

“The telehealth market has grown quickly, and though its utilization has been normalized in recent times, we’re nonetheless in a progress part the place people can have vastly completely different experiences based mostly on the suppliers they use, their medical situations and even issues like the standard of web and telephone connections the place they dwell,” mentioned Christopher Lis, managing director of world healthcare intelligence at J.D. Energy, mentioned in a press release. 

“Most shoppers agree that telehealth is hard to beat on the subject of comfort and accessing care shortly, however it’s not the best channel for all healthcare encounters. The huge variation in affected person expertise is one thing telehealth suppliers, insurers and public well being officers will need to monitor intently.”

THE LARGER TREND

Telehealth use surged throughout the pandemic. Now that the pandemic has slowed, telemedicine has remained part of sufferers’ experiences, particularly in comparison with pre-pandemic occasions, although the usage of the modality varies amongst suppliers.

Earlier this 12 months, the CDC Nationwide Heart for Well being Statistics launched knowledge from the Nationwide Digital Well being Information Survey, citing that in 2021, 27.4% extra medical specialists used telemedicine for half of their affected person visits, greater than main care physicians and surgical specialists. 

Major care physicians (76.7%) and medical specialists (73.1%) have been in a position to present sufferers with an identical high quality of care as in-person visits, and each have been extra prone to be glad with the know-how in comparison with surgical specialists, 49.7% of which mentioned telemedicine was not applicable for his or her specialty or sufferers.