Patients’ Satisfaction with Telemedicine in Qassim Region, Saudi Arabia

Background: There was tremendous use of telemedicine since the inception of COVID - 19 pandemic everywhere to curb the social distancing and close contact. Information and technology given new dimension of delivery of health care to the public. Objectives: To find the telemedicine satisfaction, demographic factors and other factors association with telemedicine satisfaction among the Qassim population.

Methods: There was a cross sectional study conducted among the 385 sample during the period from January 2021 to December 2021. Data was collected through the google forms online questionnaire among aged 19 years and above people. Based on the variables, necessary statistical tests were applied.

Results: In the present study, 376 participated in the study. Among them 56.4% were males and mean age and standard deviation was 37.91 ± 11.22. About 40.4% were knew the telemedicine services from the government authorities. In the current study, about overall quality of telemedicine satisfaction mentioned from the patients was 77.7%. There was statistically significant association was observed between different levels of satisfaction from satisfied to not satisfied with male gender (male satisfaction 82.5% versus females satisfaction 71.3%, P<0.05).

Conclusions: Based on the study results, close to every four out of five patients were satisfied about Telemedicine services in the Qassim. Little low patient satisfaction was observed among the diabetes, lipid disorders patients and autoimmune diseases. In spite of available normal services in the Qassim hospitals to the patients, still there is need of telemedicine services to the people having chronic morbidity, living in rural areas and to saving money for transport of the patients.