The impact of telemedicine on patient-reported outcomes in urologic oncology.

Abstract

e14154 Background: Nearly 20% of Americans live in rural communities. These individuals face barriers to accessing cancer care, including prevalent poverty and substantial travel burden to seeing cancer providers. We aimed to assess the impact of a rurally focused telemedicine program on patient outcomes in our urologic oncology outpatient clinic. Methods: We prospectively identified patients from rural Washington State, or who lived outside Washington, with a known or suspected urological malignancy being evaluated at the University of Washington Urology Clinic via an in person clinic or a telemedicine appointment. Patients were invited to complete a post-visit survey that assessed satisfaction, travel time, costs, and work absenteeism. We compared patient-reported outcomes between those seen as in-person versus telemedicine visits. Results: We invited 291 eligible patients from June 2019 – February 2020 to participate, 140 patients (48%) completed the survey. One-hundred and thirty-three patients had in person visits and 7 had telemedicine visits. Median age was 68, male 86%, and 69% Caucasian. Eighty-seven patients (62%) were from rural Washington; the remainder resided out-of-state. Patients were being evaluated for prostate cancer (57%), kidney cancer (18%), urothelial cancer (24%), and testis cancer (1%). Patient-reported outcomes are displayed in Table. Seventeen patients coming for in-person visits (13%) paid ≥ $1000 in total travel costs. No differences were noted in patient satisfaction. Conclusions: Patients traveling to our clinic from out-of-state and rural Washington incur significant travel time, costs, and time away from work to receive outpatient urologic cancer care. Telemedicine provides a medium for cancer care delivery that eliminates the significant travel burden associated with in person clinic appointments. [Table: see text]