Telehealth use associated with physician satisfaction

Telehealth was linked to physician satisfaction and improved perceptions of the quality of care, according to research recently published in the International Journal of Medical Informatics.

Telehealth skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic. It encompassed less than 1% of all visits in the last three quarters of 2019, jumping to 31.2% in the second quarter of 2020, according to data from Epic Research. Though telehealth utilization rates dropped to 5.8% in the third quarter of 2023, it remains widely used across several specialties, including mental healthcare.

Researchers from the State University of New York's Binghamton University, the University of South Florida and the University of Queensland in Australia set out to examine the relationship between telehealth and physician satisfaction. They assessed data from the 2021 annual National Electronic Health Records Survey (NEHRS), which included 10,302 questionnaire responses from physicians nationwide. Of these, 1,875 were complete questionnaire responses.

The study shows that telehealth had significant positive effects on physician satisfaction. More specifically, telephone, videoconference, stand-alone telehealth platforms and telehealth platforms integrated with EHR have significant positive effects on physician satisfaction with telemedicine and their evaluation of care quality.

"We thought there would be more resistance from doctors to use telemedicine, so it's possible that in the times of COVID, they found it beneficial because they could at least serve their patients by going around the in-person constraints we had," said study author Sumantra Sarkar, Ph.D., an associate professor at Binghamton University's School of Management, in a press release.

Thus, researchers concluded that physicians are satisfied with telehealth technology and believe it increases care quality.

"If telemedicine usage is to continue, then we need to keep understanding how it impacts physicians," Sarkar said.

The study findings align with prior research showing that physicians are satisfied with telehealth. Federal data published in February 2024 showed that 77% of primary care physicians, 73.1% of medical specialists and 50.6% of surgical specialists said that the quality of care they were able to provide during telehealth and in-person visits was similar.

However, studies also show that telehealth use was linked to an increase in physicians' EHR workload. A study published in November 2023 found that telehealth use was associated with an increase in the time physicians spent documenting visits in the EHR.

The research team studied the EHR metadata of 1,052 physicians for 115 weeks across two periods: before the COVID-19 pandemic (August 2018 to September 2019) and after the onset of the pandemic (August 2020 to September 2021).

The time physicians spent working in the EHR during patient scheduled hours increased from 4.53 hours per eight PSHs during the pre-pandemic period to 5.46 hours per eight PSHs during the pandemic period.

Understanding how telehealth use affects physicians is critical to adoption overall, as research further shows that physicians can drive telehealth use among patients. A study published in January 2024 evaluated patient motivations for using telehealth and patient characteristics associated with telehealth use, finding that clinician recommendations or requirements are the most compelling reason for patients to seek and use telehealth.

The researchers evaluated a 2022 survey that included 5,317 respondents. A majority of survey respondents (73.6%) said the main reason they would use telehealth is if their physician recommended or required the service. Other common reasons included convenience (65.7%) and the opportunity to avoid infection exposure (49.5%).

Anuja Vaidya has covered the healthcare industry since 2012. She currently covers the virtual healthcare landscape, including telehealth, remote patient monitoring and digital therapeutics.