Background: Due to a lack of routine follow-ups, inpatient, and outpatient-based therapies, the current COVID-19 pandemic has an impact on the morbidities of orthopaedic patients. Telemedicine has recently been a viable option for delivering healthcare to patients and disseminating vital information on orthopaedic self-care and medications that may be used without a trip to the hospital. Telemedicine is sure to have some restrictions as well, though, because no physical examination is conducted. The purpose of this study is to evaluate how well proactive telemedicine keeps track of orthopaedic patients and how satisfied those patients are with telemedicine as a different means of therapy delivery. The follow-up patients who visited the orthopaedic outpatient department in February 2020 were included in this one-month cross-sectional study. The patients were referred to in order. On a daily basis, in the sequence of their registration. Patients who gave their consent received telemedicine-based consultations, while those who required physical examinations were contacted for outpatient visits after submitting the necessary documentation. For various diagnosis-based groups, the response rates and the number of patients requiring in-person visits were counted. Patients were asked to respond to a questionnaire about telemedicine, including questions about how satisfied they were with it overall, how effective it was, and how simple it was to follow the telemedicine-based treatment. Telemedicine had an 88.67% response rate. 71.43% of patients who used telemedicine were treated without the need for in-person visits to the outpatient department. The most frequent justifications for recommending physical outpatient visits were the need for a physical examination and ineffective patient-doctor communication. 92% of people were satisfied with telemedicine overall, and 7.2% were not satisfied. of patients found it challenging to comprehend or implement telemedicine-based advice.
KeywordsOrthopaedics; Patient care; Patient satisfaction; Telemedicine
Published Date: 2022-12-30; Received Date: 2022-12-05
