Telehealth Satisfaction Increases for Clinicians, Decreases for Patients

BRIGHTON — Almost three years since the beginning of the pandemic, what have we learned about telehealth, and how can we make it better for everyone? Massachusetts Health Quality Partners (MHQP) has endeavored to answer this question throughout the pandemic in multiple ways.

First, it launched “Together for Better Telehealth” in the summer of 2020, a series of surveys to help clinicians share what they were learning from their telehealth experiences. Then, in the summer of 2021, MHQP fielded its “Telehealth One Year Later” surveys to better understand how both patients and clinicians were experiencing telehealth.

These surveys exposed a concerning gap between patient satisfaction and clinician satisfaction with regard to telehealth. At that point, 89% of the patients surveyed reported that their telehealth experience was either “excellent” or “very good.” This stood in stark contrast to the 43% of clinicians who gave their telehealth experiences such high ratings. Patients loved it, but clinicians were much less enthusiastic — an enormous satisfaction gap.

This past summer, MHQP fielded another set of surveys for both clinicians and patients to assess how things have changed in the past year. These surveys revealed that clinician satisfaction with telehealth increased in 2022 versus 2021, while patient satisfaction decreased. Although patients continue to like the telehealth experience in 2022 much more than clinicians do, that gap has narrowed since 2021.

Specifically, 58% of clinicians who responded said their overall satisfaction with telehealth visits in the past year was either “excellent” or “very good,” compared to 43% in 2021. Only 1% of clinicians rated their satisfaction as “poor” in 2022, compared to 12% in 2021. Meanwhile, 79% of clinicians reported that their personal experiences with telehealth were “significantly better” or “somewhat better” than at the beginning of the pandemic.

Based on comments from respondents, this improvement seems to be largely driven by two factors: improvements to telehealth platform and/or process, and patients and providers becoming more comfortable with the technology.

The positive news about clinician satisfaction increasing is tempered by the fact that the percentage of patients reporting that their telehealth experience was either “excellent” or “very good” decreased from 89% in 2021 to 81% 2022, while 7% of patients rated their satisfaction as “fair” or “poor” in 2022, as compared to 3% in 2021. Although patients continue to have high levels of satisfaction with telehealth, the eight-point drop in satisfaction in one year is notable.

Based on comments from patients, this decline seems to be driven primary by telehealth not being offered across state lines, telehealth not being an option when wanted, and ongoing frustration with the technology.

Patients continue to have very high levels of satisfaction with telehealth primarily because of the convenience it offers and especially when the clinical situation does not require an in-person visit. MHQP believes continued focus on technological advancements, policy improvements, and a relentless focus on the patient as the customer will go a long way to restoring and retaining high levels of patient satisfaction with telehealth.

Clinician satisfaction, while improving, still remains relatively low. Great progress appears to have been made over the past few years, and patients and clinicians have become more comfortable with using telehealth, but there is still much work to do to make telehealth a technology that clinicians will consistently turn to and patients can reliably count on for accessing care. After all, 81% of patients and 75% of clinicians responding in 2022 believed that telehealth will be “extremely important” or “very important” to the future of care.