• Young Erben, Camila Franco-Mesa, Osman Hamid, Michelle Lin, William Stone, Andrew J Meltzer, Wendy Hattery, Arta Palaj, Laura L Wilshusen, Tafi L Vista, Manju Kalra, Houssam Farres, Thomas C Bower, Randall R De Martino, Josephine F Huang, James F Meschia, and Sarvam P TerKonda.
• Division of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery, Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, Fla. Electronic address: erben.young@mayo.edu.
• J. Vasc. Surg. 2021 Jul 1; 74 (1): 1-4.

ObjectiveTo assess the introduction of telemedicine as an alternative to the traditional face-to-face encounters with vascular surgery patients in the era of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.MethodsA retrospective review of prospectively collected data on face-to-face and telemedicine interactions was conducted at a multisite health care system from January to August 2020 in vascular surgery patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. The end point is direct patient satisfaction comparison between face-to-face and telemedicine encounters/interactions prior and during the pandemic.ResultsThere were 6262 patient encounters from January 1, 2020, to August 6, 2020. Of the total encounters, 790 (12.6%) were via telemedicine, which were initiated on March 11, 2020, after the World Health Organization's declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic. These telemedicine encounters were readily adopted and embraced by both the providers and patients and remain popular as an option to patients for all types of visits. Of these patients, 78.7% rated their overall health care experience during face-to-face encounters as very good and 80.6% of patients rated their health care experience during telemedicine encounters as very good (P = .78).ConclusionsAlthough the COVID-19 pandemic has produced unprecedented consequences to the practice of medicine and specifically of vascular surgery, our multisite health care system has been able to swiftly adapt and adopt telemedicine technologies for the care of our complex patients. Most important, the high quality of patient-reported satisfaction and health care experience has remained unchanged.Copyright © 2020 Society for Vascular Surgery. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

21 keywords...

hide…