1293: Is Virtual Care Here to Stay? Rheumatology Patients’ Satisfaction in Early vs Late Pandemic

Ummugulsum Gazel¹, Tommy Han², Seyyid Bilal Acikgoz³, Tara Swami¹, Hart goldhar⁴, Urusa Shah³, Rokshana Chowdhury³, Nataliya Milman³, Nancy Maltez¹, Catherine Ivory¹, Susan Humphrey-Murto³ and Sibel Aydin¹, ¹University of Ottawa, Rheumatology, Ottawa, Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada, ²University of Ottawa, Medical School, Ottawa, Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada, ³University of Ottawa, Rheumatology, Ottawa, Canada, Ottawa, Canada, ⁴William Osler Health Centre Etobicoke General Site, Rheumatology, Toronto, ON, Canada

Background/Purpose: The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed the delivery of healthcare, with virtual care becoming the new standard. In the early stages of the pandemic, physicians were very creative to rapidly adapt to virtual care and studies reported high levels of patient satisfaction. It is unclear whether this high level of satisfaction would be maintained long term, after patients experience multiple virtual visits. We aimed to compare patients' satisfaction with virtual visits in the early and late period of the Covid-19 pandemic and to determine the impacting factors in patients' satisfaction.

Methods: We sent patient satisfaction surveys with virtual visits to patients who had at least one virtual visit during the early Covid-19 pandemic (May 2020-Sept 2020). Patients who agreed to participate in an extension study received a similar survey to reflect their satisfaction levels for their later visits between Aug 2021-May 2022. Chi-square tests was used for comparisons for early vs late pandemic satisfaction levels and factors impacting the satisfaction levels were investigated using multivariate logistic regression analysis.

Results: A total of 741 and 270 patients responded to surveys in the early and late Covid-19 pandemic periods respectively. Patient demographics for both periods were similar for age, sex and diagnosis (table-1-2). Overall satisfaction levels decreased in the later stages in comparison to the early stages with 89% vs 81.2%, respectively, p=0.003) patients reporting they were satisfied to very satisfied with virtual care. Despite the reduced satisfaction levels in the late period, 55.5 % of the patients still declared their willingness to continue with virtual care even after the pandemic, a similar result to early pandemic (Figure). In multivariate analysis, speaking with a rheumatologist (p=0.035; OR (95%CI) 1.921 (1.047-3.526)), being called on time (p< 0.001; OR (95%CI) 4.807(2.330-9.915)) and capability of using phone (p< 0.001, OR (95%CI) 4.361(2.503-7.597)) were found to be associated with overall satisfaction in the early period. In the late Covid-19 pandemic period, being called on time (p=0.038; OR (95%CI) 2.333(1.046-4.768)) and capability of using phone (p=0.001; OR (95%CI) 3.516 (1.729-7.150)) were found to be associated with overall satisfaction. However, there was no association between speaking with a rheumatologist vs a resident and overall satisfaction in the late Covid-19 pandemic period (p=0.263; OR (95%CI) 1.639(0.690-3.892)).

Conclusion: Our results suggested that while the patients' satisfaction with the virtual visit decreased slightly over time, approximately 80% of the patients still are satisfied with virtual care. In addition, more than half of the patients support ongoing virtual visits after the pandemic. This study has important implications for policy decision makers as they consider resource allocation for long term virtual care.
Table-1: Patient demographics, characteristic of virtual visits and background information about phone visits

Table-2: The comparison of factors affecting the patient satisfaction in early and late Covid-19 pandemic period.

Figure: The patients’ thoughts and satisfaction on the virtual visit in early and late Covid-19 pandemic period
Disclosures: U. Gazel, None; T. Han, None; S. Acikgoz, None; T. Swami, None; H. goldhar, AbbVie/Abbott, Fresenius Kabi; U. Shah, None; R. Chowdhury, None; N. Milman, None; N. Maltez, None; C. Ivory, None; S. Humphrey-Murto, None; S. Aydin, None.