Pilot Study of Video and Telephone Primary Care Visits

Johns Hopkins University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Telemedicine

Treatments: Other: Internet-connected computer tablet

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04496713

IRB00257994

Details and patient eligibility

About

The inability to access and use smartphones or camera-outfitted internet-connected devices during the COVID-19 pandemic relegates certain patients to receive audio-only telemedicine instead of audio/video-based telemedicine. The investigators are conducting a randomized controlled trial in order to characterize patient and provider attitudes towards these two modalities of care and to test the feasibility of a new model to make tablets for video-based care accessible to those who need that. The investigators hypothesize that patient and provider satisfaction will be higher with video-based telehealth when compared to phone-based telehealth.

Enrollment: 15 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Adult patients scheduled for telephone-based visits who are doing so because of a lack of ability to conduct a video visit (i.e. no tablet/laptop; no access to internet) who live in Baltimore City

Exclusion criteria

• Patients with significant visual or hearing impairment
• Patients that have legal guardians or who are marked as lacking healthcare decision-making capacity
• Patients that have not selected English as their preferred language

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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15 participants in 2 patient groups

Telemedicine - Phone

No Intervention group

Description:

Patients will continue with their telephone-based telemedicine visit as scheduled. There will be no change to their care. Patients will receive a survey by mail about the visit.

Telemedicine - Audio/Video

Experimental group

Description:

Patients will be given an internet-connected tablet to have their upcoming visit with their physician by audio/video. A survey can be completed on the tablet. The devices will be sent back to the research time after their single use.

Treatment:

Other: Internet-connected computer tablet