News Article Portrayal of Virtual Care for Health Care Delivery in the First 7 Months of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Rush, Kathy L.; Burton, Lindsay; Smith, Mindy A; Singh, Sarah; Schaab, Kira; Görges, Matthias; Janke, Robert; Currie, Leanne M.

doi:10.1089/tmr.2020.0033

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…The fear about missed diagnoses during virtual care expressed by the micropractice physicians was also seen in a recent media review, in which health care providers worried that less frequent care, or more impersonal virtual care, might worsen health outcomes [ 45 ]. Missed diagnoses during virtual care have not been widely reported; in contrast, a report of tele-ophthalmology during the COVID-19 pandemic indicated appropriate triage and what appeared to be reasonable patient safety, with only 1.5% of virtual visits resulting in an in-person visit within 1 day or 5.4% in a visit within 2 weeks [ 46 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Empowering Patients Through Virtual Care Delivery: Qualitative Study With Micropractice Clinic Patients and Health Care Providers

Burton¹,

Rush²,

Smith³

et al. 2022

JMIR Form Res

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Background Prior to the wider adoption of digital health technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic, applications of virtual care were largely limited to specialist visits and remote care using telehealth (phone or video) applications. Data sharing approaches using tethered patient portals were mostly built around hospitals and larger care systems. These portals offer opportunities for improved communication, but despite a belief that care has improved, they have so far shown few outcome improvements beyond medication adherence. Less is known about use of virtual care and related tools in the outpatient context and particularly in rural community contexts. Objective This study aims to reflect on the opportunities and barriers for sustainable virtual care through an example of a digitally enabled rural micropractice, which has provided 10%-15% virtual care since 2016 and 70% virtual care since March 2020. Methods Three focus groups, 1 with providers (physician and medical office manager) and 2 with a total of 8 patients from a rural micropractice in British Columbia, were conducted in November 2020 and December 2020. Virtual care delivery was explored through the topics of communication approach, mixing virtual and in-person care, the practice team’s journey in developing these approaches, and provider and patient satisfaction with the care model. Interviews were transcribed, checked for accuracy against recordings, and thematically analyzed. Results Both patients and providers reported ease of communication and high satisfaction. Either could initiate communication, and patients found the ability to share health information asynchronously through the portal allowed time to reflect and prepare their thoughts. Patients were highly engaged and reported feeling empowered and true partners in their health care, although they noted limited care coordination with specialists. The mix of virtual and in-person visits was highly regarded by patients and providers, and patients reported feeling safe and cared for 24/7, although both expressed concern about work spilling into the provider’s home life. The physician worried about missed diagnoses with virtual care. With respect to establishing the micropractice, solutions took about 5 years to optimize, with providers noting a learning curve requiring technical support for both themselves and their patients and a willingness to respond to patient feedback to identify the best solutions. Despite a mature virtual practice, patients reported deferred care due to COVID-19. Conclusions The micropractice’s hybrid care model encouraged patients to be true partners in their care and resulted in high patient engagement and satisfaction; yet, success may rely on the patient population being willing to engage and being comfortable with technology. Barriers lie in gaps in care coordination and provider fear that signs or symptoms more evident with an in-person exam could be missed. Even in this setting, deferral of care in light of COVID-19 was present, and opportunities to address care gaps should be sought.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Empowering Patients Through Virtual Care Delivery: Qualitative Study With Micropractice Clinic Patients and Health Care Providers

Burton¹,

Rush²,

Smith³

et al. 2022

JMIR Form Res

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…24 While in-person visits began to expand in May 2020, the majority of visits were conducted virtually throughout the data collection period. 25 …”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Has Virtual Care Arrived? A Survey of Rural Canadian Providers During the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Burton

Rush

Smith

et al. 2022

Health�Serv�Insights

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We investigated the uptake and perceptions of virtual care solutions by rural Canadian primary and specialist providers during the early phase (May-June 2020) of the COVID-19 pandemic. A web-based, cross-sectional survey of rural primary and specialty care providers examined types of virtual care platforms used (eg, phone, video), appointment length, experience and satisfaction with the solution used, plans for future use of virtual care, and patients’ use of virtual care services. Targeted participants were actively-practicing providers in rural Western Canada who were emailed an invitation for the study and its survey link. Fifty-nine providers (26% response rate) completed the survey. During the pandemic, 78% of providers reported using virtual care for more than 60% of their appointments, while only 3% did so frequently pre-pandemic. Most providers used phone consultations, despite believing that video provided a better virtual visit. Key barriers included workflow interruptions, unique concerns about quality of care, remuneration and sustainability, or poor internet access and bandwidth for both providers and patients. The key opportunity noted was improved access to care. While most virtual care visits were not conducted using video technologies, overall virtual care resulted in high provider satisfaction, while not increasing workload. Virtual care will continue to play an important role in future rural care practice; however, sustainability will require both provider-level and system-level changes.

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“…Analysis of publicly available content constitutes part of open-source intelligence. Media content analysis on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health workforce has primarily focused on the experiences of the health workforce (eg, perception of safety [27][28][29], mental distress [28,[30][31][32][33], labor shortages [30], and online health services and outreach initiatives [34][35][36][37]), a comprehensive overview of the disruption caused by the pandemic is still needed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding COVID-19 Impacts on the Health Workforce: AI-Assisted Open-Source Media Content Analysis

Pienkowska,

Ravaut,

Mammadova

et al. 2024

JMIR Form Res

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Background To investigate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health workforce, we aimed to develop a framework that synergizes natural language processing (NLP) techniques and human-generated analysis to reduce, organize, classify, and analyze a vast volume of publicly available news articles to complement scientific literature and support strategic policy dialogue, advocacy, and decision-making. Objective This study aimed to explore the possibility of systematically scanning intelligence from media that are usually not captured or best gathered through structured academic channels and inform on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health workforce, contributing factors to the pervasiveness of the impacts, and policy responses, as depicted in publicly available news articles. Our focus was to investigate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and, concurrently, assess the feasibility of gathering health workforce insights from open sources rapidly. Methods We conducted an NLP-assisted media content analysis of open-source news coverage on the COVID-19 pandemic published between January 2020 and June 2022. A data set of 3,299,158 English news articles on the COVID-19 pandemic was extracted from the World Health Organization Epidemic Intelligence through Open Sources (EIOS) system. The data preparation phase included developing rules-based classification, fine-tuning an NLP summarization model, and further data processing. Following relevancy evaluation, a deductive-inductive approach was used for the analysis of the summarizations. This included data extraction, inductive coding, and theme grouping. Results After processing and classifying the initial data set comprising 3,299,158 news articles and reports, a data set of 5131 articles with 3,007,693 words was devised. The NLP summarization model allowed for a reduction in the length of each article resulting in 496,209 words that facilitated agile analysis performed by humans. Media content analysis yielded results in 3 sections: areas of COVID-19 impacts and their pervasiveness, contributing factors to COVID-19–related impacts, and responses to the impacts. The results suggest that insufficient remuneration and compensation packages have been key disruptors for the health workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to industrial actions and mental health burdens. Shortages of personal protective equipment and occupational risks have increased infection and death risks, particularly at the pandemic’s onset. Workload and staff shortages became a growing disruption as the pandemic progressed. Conclusions This study demonstrates the capacity of artificial intelligence–assisted media content analysis applied to open-source news articles and reports concerning the health workforce. Adequate remuneration packages and personal protective equipment supplies should be prioritized as preventive measures to reduce the initial impact of future pandemics on the health workforce. Interventions aimed at lessening the emotional toll and workload need to be formulated as a part of reactive measures, enhancing the efficiency and maintainability of health delivery during a pandemic.

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News Article Portrayal of Virtual Care for Health Care Delivery in the First 7 Months of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Cited by 7 publications

References 11 publications

Empowering Patients Through Virtual Care Delivery: Qualitative Study With Micropractice Clinic Patients and Health Care Providers

Empowering Patients Through Virtual Care Delivery: Qualitative Study With Micropractice Clinic Patients and Health Care Providers

Has Virtual Care Arrived? A Survey of Rural Canadian Providers During the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Understanding COVID-19 Impacts on the Health Workforce: AI-Assisted Open-Source Media Content Analysis

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