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Patient Experience with Non-Clinical Aspects of Virtual Clinics: Beyond User Interface Design

Authors:
Malak Baslyman

Keywords: Software Engineering; Healthcare; eHealth; Patient Experience.

Abstract:
eHealth practices bring many opportunities to the healthcare sector, such as increasing accessibility to healthcare services while controlling cost and resource allocation. Virtual clinics are one of the essential components of the eHealth system. Virtual clinics have been widely implemented, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic and after it. Hence, it is important to evaluate patient satisfaction with the quality of the care services provided by those clinics. Many studies attempted to evaluate the patient experience with virtual clinics from the angle of user interface design and user experience when interacting with virtual clinics applications. However, there is a lack of studies investigating patient experience and satisfaction regarding nonclinical aspects that are related to clinical tasks in the context of virtual clinic applications. Hence, the main objectives of this study are to evaluate patient experience with non-clinical aspects of virtual clinics using a standardized tool and analyze opinions of multi-perspectives of users (patients, physicians, and software engineers) to enhance patient experience design regarding the non-clinical aspects. This study utilized the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey to evaluate patient satisfaction with non-clinical aspects of virtual clinics. In addition, a focus group session was conducted to collect data on the issues related to non-clinical aspects and how to resolve those issues and enhance the patient experience when designing virtual clinics. The results showed that participants are generally satisfied with the quality of communication with doctors in virtual consultations and with using the virtual clinics overall. However, participants have a negative experience regarding information availability of patient health record and medicines and their side effects. Moreover, the participants of the focus group session emphasized the importance of enhancing human communication and integration of human value when designing virtual clinic applications, and providing better support after the online session is over.

Pages: 23 to 28

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2023

Publication date: April 24, 2023

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4359

ISBN: 978-1-68558-080-3

Location: Venice, Italy

Dates: from April 24, 2023 to April 28, 2023