Vascular Diseases
Conditions
Keywords
Vascular, Clinic visit, Tele-health
Brief summary
The aim of the current study is to compare virtual clinic visits (i.e., real-time, face-to-face visits conducted over the internet with tablet devices) to actual physical clinic visits. After both types of visits (virtual versus physical) physicians will be asked to classify patients into low, moderate or high risk for a vascular intervention. It is hypothesized that there will be good agreement between classifications made after the virtual visits as compared to those made after physical visits. That is, virtual visit classifications will be as good as those made after physical visits.
Detailed description
Patient dissatisfaction can increase because of the complexities associated with navigating modern health care systems. It is easy to speculate that some of this dissatisfaction is associated with travel, wait times and other issues that arise during routine clinic visits. The authors of recent studies have demonstrated that it is possible and feasible to conduct many routine visits remotely. It is our belief that virtual health assessments and treatment plans (VHAT) conducted remotely can be as effective, perhaps be more efficient and increase patient satisfaction when compared to regular physical health assessments and treatment plans (PHAT). Physicians want to provide optimal health care; however, in geographically isolated areas such as some locations in West Virginia that can be a challenge. It seems reasonable to believe that monitoring patients with telehealth technology, collecting on-going real time data and conducting VHAT can provide high quality health care for patients. It can also help to classify health risk, increase patient and medical staff satisfaction, decrease staff time for visits, while at the same time increase the efficiency of the follow-up process. The investigators plan to compare the physician assessments and future treatment plans made using VHAT to those made after PHAT. It is believed that VHAT assessments will be in agreement with those made with PHAT.
Interventions
PROCEDUREVirtual visit
Type of visit
Sponsors
CAMC Health System
Sarah & Pauline Maier Foundation, Inc.
WVCTSI
Study design
Allocation
NA
Intervention model
SINGLE_GROUP
Primary purpose
HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH
Masking
NONE
Masking description
Open label
Intervention model description
Single arm crossover design where all participants receive both types of visits (Virtual and Physical visits).
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to 90 Years
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
-Patients referred to and scheduled for an initial visit at our Vascular Center of Excellence (VCOE).
Exclusion criteria
* Patients that are deemed urgent cases by the VCOE, and scheduled within two weeks for the initial clinic visit. * Patients who are scheduled to have the placement of an arteriovenous (AV) fistula at the time of the initial clinic visit.
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Categorization of physician treatment plans. (Physicians will classify treatment plans as low, moderate or high need for vascular intervention) | 1 week | Comparison of virtual visit treatment plans to physical treatment plans. After assessments, physicians will classify patients' treatment plans into low (treat medically), moderate (vascular intervention in the future, but not immediately) or high (needs immediately, within 2 weeks). The distribution of low, moderate and high among the two types of visits (Virtual and Physical) will be compared. |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Patient satisfaction | 1 week | Comparison of patient satisfaction after virtual and physical visits. Satisfaction will be measured by two survey questions based on a 1 to 5 Likert scale. |
Countries
United States
Outcome results
None listed