Abstract
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the health sector faced a temporary limitation of direct provision of health services, which was addressed by switching to telemedicine. This approach was used very limitedly until then.
Despite adopting the law on healthcare digitalization, the Czech Republic still belongs to the countries with a lower level of digitalization of healthcare processes. Our research aimed to identify patients' experiences with providing health care by general practitioners (GPs and PLDDs) and outpatient specialists in a distant form using information and communication technologies (ICT) in the COVID-19 era.
Another aim was to identify motivation, barriers and benefits of distant medicine in primary care from the patient's perspective. The research was based on a quantitative research approach.
A questionnaire survey was conducted in the spring of 2021 among patients who are members of patient organizations. The results indicated the use of telemedicine mainly through telephone and email communication without using the full potential of ICT.
The lack of a systemic setup for this form of healthcare has led to a greater use of ICT and the implementation of telemedicine in primary care only during a pandemic.