Assessing People's Hospital Outpatient Appointment Preferences in the United Kingdom

Summary

The sustainability of the United Kingdom's National Health Service's (NHS) is threatened immediately by Covid-19 and continually by an increasing prevalence of long-conditions that cannot be cured but can be maintained. Shifting traditional face-to-face outpatient appointments to remote video consultations may help the NHS continue to serve patients efficiently. While much research has examined healthcare providers' attitudes and beliefs about remote video consultations, less has attempted to understand how NHS service providers should invite patients to attend them. The present study examines how the framing of an invitation to attend a hospital outpatient appointment by video influences the proportion of people who agree to attend by video. It also explores some of the barriers and facilitators people may experience to attending appointments by video across diagnostic complexities and age groups. The results of this study should help hospitals better present patients with the option to attend video consultations where appropriate, and provide support to mitigate common barriers to people's willingness to give video consultations a go.

Conditions

• Hospital Outpatient Clinics
• Chronic Disease

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Video Default

The case and response options participants in this group will be asked to consider is provided below. Imagine that a hospital clinician you have been seeing for over a year tells you that that upon reviewing your patient notes they would like you to attend your next consultation by video. Consider each of the response options below, and select the one that best describes how you would respond to your clinician. A) Yes, I would be happy to attend a video consultation. B) If possible, I would rather attend the appointment in person.

BEHAVIORAL

In-Person Default

The case and response options participants in this group will be asked to consider is provided below. Imagine that a hospital clinician you have been seeing for over a year tells you that that upon reviewing your patient notes they would like you to attend your next consultation in person. Consider each of the response options below, and select the one that best describes how you would respond to your clinician. A) Yes, I would be happy to attend an in-person consultation. B) If possible, I would rather attend the appointment by video.

BEHAVIORAL

Active Choice

The case and response options participants in this group will be asked to consider is provided below. Imagine that a hospital clinician you have been seeing for over a year tells you that that upon reviewing your patient notes they would like you to attend a consultation by video or in person. Consider each of the response options below, and select the one that best describes how you would respond to your clinician. A) I would prefer a video consultation. B) I would prefer an in-person consultation.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Warwick

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Kelly A Schmidtke, PhD · University of Warwick

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Masking

DOUBLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2020-09-11

Primary Completion

2020-10-31

Completion

2020-10-31

Countries

• United Kingdom

Study Locations