SHBC1652

W.L.D.NG¹, K.W.J LEW¹, E.S. LEE¹, T.S.B. GAN¹, S.W. NG¹, H.Y. GUI¹, Y.P. WONG¹, Z.Y. CHIE¹, S.P.S. LEE¹, K.W. TAN¹, S.M.Y. CHEN¹, SKW WONG¹

National Healthcare Group Polyclinics¹

The COVID-19 pandemic catalysed the increase in doctor video-consultations (VC) in National Healthcare Group Polyclinics (NHGP). Existing patients with chronic diseases could opt for a VC for follow up of their chronic diseases to reduce the number of face-to-face consultations in NHGP. The aim of this study was to describe the usefulness, ease of use, interaction and interface quality, reliability, patient satisfaction and describe the commonest problem encountered with VC in NHGP.

Patients who successfully completed a doctor VC received a short message (SMS) from April 2021 to June 2021 containing a link to an anonymized online survey containing the Telehealth Usability Questionnaire (TUQ). Item-specific and domain responses were analysed using the R statistical package.

424 patients (15.7% response rate) participated in the survey. The mean age of participants was 57.3 +/- 10.6 years. 33.5% received university / postgraduate educational qualifications. 78.3% conducted the VC at home.

 84.7% found the VC useful and 86.4% found it easy to use. 83.3% were satisfied with the interaction quality and 81.6% were satisfied with the quality of the user interface. 66.8% felt that the platform was reliable. 82.6% of patients were satisfied with VC and 85.2% would use the VC platform again. When participants encountered problems with the VC platform they felt they were not able to resume the VC or troubleshoot.

Most participants were satisfied with doctor VCs. Being able to troubleshoot issues encountered during VC will be an area of improvement as NHGP continues to improve its VC services for patients.