Patients and providers satisfaction with telemedicine in Riyadh

Abstract

Background: Patients’ and physicians’ satisfaction toward the healthcare system could be considered as a good indicator for measuring the quality of the health services itself. The level of satisfaction of general population toward any aspect related to medical practice could be obtained throughout using surveys. One of the factors that increase the need for telemedicine is the occurrence of COVID-19 pandemic however, telemedicine did not be tested before during disaster settings. Therefore, the aim of this study is to assess the satisfaction level of patients and physicians toward using of telemedicine in Al Riyadh region, Saudi Arabia. Methodology: This is cross-sectional study that was conducted among general population and physicians in Al-Riyadh region, Saudi Arabia. The study depended on online self-reported questionnaire which include parts of previous studies. The questionnaire includes three parts: demographic factors of participants, assessment of patients’ satisfaction toward telemedicine and assessment of physician’s satisfaction toward telemedicine. Data analysis will be performed using SPSS version 26. Results: In this study, we were able to collect 408 responses for our questionnaire, where 218 of them were patients (53.5%) and 190 were physicians (46.5%). Among physicians, 75.3% of them were aged between 26-35 years old while 70.5% of patients were in the same age interval. Among physicians, 43.9% of the physicians were satisfied with experience with telemedicine while 22.4% were dissatisfied and 4.9% were very dissatisfied with experience. Moreover, 50.8% of patients were satisfied with their experience with telemedicine and 28.1% were very satisfied. Furthermore, 72.9% of the patients were very satisfied with the fact that telemedicine made healthcare easier in the time of COVID-19 pandemic. Conclusion: We found the patients and physicians in Saudi Arabia had good satisfaction toward using of telemedicine however, some issues were found and those could be used for further development of the telemedicine in Saudi Arabia.