• Revenue Cycle Management
  • COVID-19
  • Reimbursement
  • Diabetes Awareness Month
  • Risk Management
  • Patient Retention
  • Staffing
  • Medical Economics® 100th Anniversary
  • Coding and documentation
  • Business of Endocrinology
  • Telehealth
  • Physicians Financial News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Cardiovascular Clinical Consult
  • Locum Tenens, brought to you by LocumLife®
  • Weight Management
  • Business of Women's Health
  • Practice Efficiency
  • Finance and Wealth
  • EHRs
  • Remote Patient Monitoring
  • Sponsored Webinars
  • Medical Technology
  • Billing and collections
  • Acute Pain Management
  • Exclusive Content
  • Value-based Care
  • Business of Pediatrics
  • Concierge Medicine 2.0 by Castle Connolly Private Health Partners
  • Practice Growth
  • Concierge Medicine
  • Business of Cardiology
  • Implementing the Topcon Ocular Telehealth Platform
  • Malpractice
  • Influenza
  • Sexual Health
  • Chronic Conditions
  • Technology
  • Legal and Policy
  • Money
  • Opinion
  • Vaccines
  • Practice Management
  • Patient Relations
  • Careers

Patients Choose Online Medical Communication

Article

The findings from a new report challenge the assumption that face-to-face interaction is always the preferred health care experience as patients choose virtual access if it meant better care.

Although there is a wide difference between how adequate consumers and health care decision makers feel health and medical data protections are, three quarters of patients are comfortable communicating with doctors using technology instead of seeing them in person, according to a new report.

The Cisco Customer Experience Report examined the views of consumers and health care decision makers on sharing personal health data, participating in in-person medical consultation versus remote care and using technology to make recommendations on personal health. More than 1,500 responses were collected from 10 countries.

"The patient and care provider experiences are top of mind in health care around the world," Kathy English of Cisco’s Public Sector and Healthcare Marketing, said in a statement. “Due to the increasing convergence of the digital and physical, there is an opportunity to provide increased collaboration and information sharing among providers to improve the care experience and operate more efficiently.”

According to Cisco, the report’s findings challenge the assumption that face-to-face interaction is always the preferred health care experience. Three quarters of patients said they would choose virtual access to care over human contact if it meant being treated at a perceived leading health care provider and gaining access to trusted care and expertise.

However, consumers were less comfortable (less than half) than health care practitioners (two-thirds) when it came to providing personal health and medical information for a better experience. Willingness also varied by geography — nearly 80% of North American patients were comfortable sharing information while 50% of Japanese patients expressed discomfort with the idea of submitting DNA.

Furthermore, more health care providers than consumers believed data protection in their respective countries for health and medical data was adequate. In the U.S. almost 60% of providers were confident in data protections, while only 40% of consumers felt the same. However, in Brazil the opposite held true — two-thirds of consumers believed data protection is adequate while 20% of providers shared that sentiment.

Below is an infographic from Cisco. To view it larger, click here.

Read more:

Cisco Study Reveals 74 Percent of Consumers Open to Virtual Doctor Visit

Related Videos
Victor J. Dzau, MD, gives expert advice
Victor J. Dzau, MD, gives expert advice