Abstract
Telehealth provides health care services to clients through telecommunications. Rehabilitation services such as occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech-language therapy can be delivered via telehealth. The aim of this study was to evaluate patients' reports of their satisfaction with telehealth compared to standard in-person therapy for patients living in rural areas. Four databases were utilized for this systematic review. The following words were searched: telehealth, rural, and patient satisfaction. searches identified 251 articles, and 55 were read in full text. Four articles met inclusion criteria. There was high satisfaction for patients in all studies regarding the use of telehealth. Findings showed that overall, telehealth supported increased rates of patient satisfaction for OT, PT, and SLP services delivered to rural communities.
Highlights
Telehealth provides health care services to clients through telecommunications
Telehealth supported increased rates of patient satisfaction for OT, PT, and SLP services delivered to rural communities
Articles in the full-text review were excluded if they did not pertain to rural settings, occupational therapy, physical therapy, or speech-language therapy, multidisciplinary staff involvement, patient satisfaction, or telehealth services of telephone use or videoconferencing
Summary
Telehealth provides health care services to clients through telecommunications. The aim of this study was to evaluate patients’ reports of their satisfaction with telehealth compared to standard in-person therapy for patients living in rural areas. There were 2.0 occupational therapists per 10K for rural areas compared to 3.0 occupational therapists per 10K for urban areas, with a ratio of 0.66 per capita of rural to urban occupational therapists (U.S Department of Health and Human Services, n.d.). Telehealth is the remote delivery of health-related services through telecommunication technology to clients for diagnoses, treatment, and prevention of disease and injuries, research and evaluation, and continuing education for health care providers (Koivunen & Saranto, 2018; Bagchi et al, 2018; Jacobs et al, 2015). For the purposes of this paper, we will refer to telerehabilitation as “telehealth.”
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