Patient satisfaction with cancer care delivery through telemedicine at a comprehensive cancer center across three years during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

• DOI: 10.1200/jco.2024.42.16_suppl.1632
• Publication Date: 2024-05-29T17:42:49Z
• Authors: Sahil D Doshi; Yasin Khadem Char...; Kenneth Seier; Erin Mary Bange; Robert Michael Daly; Fernanda C. G. Po...; Michael T. Buckley; Gilad Kuperman; Peter D. Stetson; Deb Schrag; Michael J. Morris; Katherine Panageas
• Keywords: Specialty; Pandemic; Demographics

1632 Background: Telemedicine, once sparingly utilized, surged during the COVID-19 pandemic to enhance care accessibility and safety concerns. Despite initial satisfaction, its usage remains highly variable across institutions. We sought explore patient satisfaction at a comprehensive cancer center, associations with demographic characteristics, change over time. Methods: A survey was sent all first-time telemedicine users Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center from September 2021 October 2023. Adult patients who had their visit, regardless of specialty, received questionnaire. It comprised 10 general questions about experience 11 regarding clinical trial education informed consent. To analyze unstructured free text responses, we employed BERTopic, topic modeling algorithm that leverages transformer-based embeddings facilitate creation easily interpretable topics within collection documents. Through BERT embeddings, captured subtle nuances semantic relationships in language identify more effectively. Results: total 15,111 completed 15,251 questionnaires; 140 completing two surveys. Patient demographics are summarized Table 1; median age encounter 66 years 98% preferred English. Satisfaction levels were high, 92% expressing willingness for future visits 90% recommending it other patients. Notably, 21% found superior in-person visits, while 53% considered them equal. Further, remained consistent six-month intervals 2021-2023. In 1606 (11%) surveys, noted discussing trials; 17% discussions consent process most either or no preference. Topic revealed 18 dataset; key included comments on video & audio quality, connectivity technology issues, convenience live outside city those physical limitations, long wait time see doctor. Conclusions: Our analysis confirms high telemedicine, including enrollment, has following pandemic. Given variability use, is important how better deliver prefer it.[Table: text]