Abstract
Background Telemedicine was relevant mostly for providing healthcare facilities in rural and
distant areas before the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. In India, telemedicine
was not ethically and legally recognized until the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In March and April 2020, the councils of different systems of medicine published the
ethical guidelines for practicing telemedicine. The mitigation measures and fear of
infection resulted in increased availing of the facility by the patients especially
those who were already under treatment for chronic diseases. The satisfaction of patients
availing of telemedicine is essential for improvising such a method of treatment.
Method A multicentric cross-sectional study was conducted at two homoeopathic research institutes
in West Bengal, India. The patients attending the outpatient department of those institutes
were offered to avail telemedicine facilities during the second wave of the COVID-19
pandemic from April to June 2021. The satisfaction of the patient was measured by
conducting a telephonic interview, measured on a predefined questionnaire. The calculated
sample size was 305 considering the attrition rate of 10%. The sample was selected
randomly from the pool of patients who availed of telemedicine during the second wave.
Result In this study, initially 305 patients were contacted for evaluating the satisfaction
level of their telehealth consultation, out of which 255 patients consented to participate.
The mean score of the overall satisfaction of the patients with the telemedicine session
was 7.93 ± 1.51(M ± standard deviation). One sample t -test was conducted for responses to every individual question and was significant
(p < 0.001). The subgroup analysis shows that overall satisfaction was significantly
different between the two institutes (p = 0.03), but other questions did not show any significant difference.
Conclusion The survey conducted shows high satisfaction among patients availing the telemedicine
facilities at the two homoeopathic research institutes.
Keywords telemedicine - patient satisfaction - AYUSH - homoeopathy - survey
