Patient experience with the use of information and communication technologies in primary care during the COVID-19 pandemic
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has required a temporary restriction on the direct provision of health services. General practitioners in the Czech Republic, as in other countries, had to switch to a distance method of communication with patients, which had been used in their practices to a very limited extent.
Despite the adoption of the Act on Electronic Health Care, the Czech Republic is still one of the countries with a low rate of digitization of health care processes. The research aimed to determine the experience of patients with the provision of healthcare by general practitioners (general practitioners for adults and general practitioners for children and adolescents) in comparison to outpatient specialists with the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the COVID-19 era and to identify motivational attitudes, barriers and benefits of distance medicine in primary care from the perspective of patients.
The study uses a mixed research design, a combination of qualitative and quantitative research approach sequentially QUAL-QUAN. In the first phase, 25 interviews were conducted with patients who, in the period from March 2020 to March 2021, received primary care provided by general practitioners remotely using ICT.
A follow-up questionnaire survey of patients who are members of patient organizations took place in the period April-June 2021 and involved 620 respondents from 65 patient organizations, while 347 respondents had personal experience with the use of ICT in communication with their doctor. It turned out that distance care took place mainly through telephone and e-mail communication, without using the full potential of ICT.
The absence of a systemic setting of this form of health care, as well as the use of ICT and the implementation of telemedicine in primary care only in times of pandemic, without prior adaptation to a new way of communication, generates a number of new problems in the patient-physician relationship. In some cases, the unregulated use of telemedicine leads to a different quality of healthcare provided.
It has also been shown that in some cases persistent paternalism negatively affects distance communication between healthcare professionals and patients. The absence of legal regulation and basic standards for the field of distance care is thus a significant barrier to the greater development of telemedicine in the practices of general practitioners, but also as a permanent part of health care in general.