Telerounding Post-TJA: A Win-Win Situation

New multicenter work has found that patients are quite happy with telerounding by their physicians. The study, “Telerounding Offers High Patient Satisfaction After Total Joint Arthroplasty,” was published in the December 2020 edition of the HSS Journal.

Evan M. Schwechter, M.D., orthopedic surgeon with Montefiore Health System, associate professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and study co-author explained to OTW the genesis of the study. “At the time this study was initiated (2016), televideo interactions with patients were not nearly as commonplace as they are in the present COVID environment. Nevertheless, since smartphones were nearly ubiquitous, and a certain comfort level with televideo technology existed, conducting telerounding was a natural progression in the emerging use of this technology.”

“This study included surveying 50 consecutive patients who experienced postoperative telerounding by a single surgeon in 2016/2017 after total hip or total knee arthroplasty [TJA], on their satisfaction with the experience. A physician assistant was available at the bedside to help mediate the interaction and help conduct the physical exam when indicated.”

When patients were asked if their care was better, or if they felt telerounding should be a regular part of patient care in the hospital, 95.6% “strongly agreed or simply agreed.” To the question, “Would you feel comfortable with daily telerounding on future inpatient stays?” 92.5% strongly agreed or simply agreed. Also, 91.4% of patients said that they “strongly agreed or simply agreed” that if their surgeon were unavailable to visit them in. person, they would prefer telerounding over in-person coverage by a partner surgeon.

“Overwhelmingly,” said Dr. Schwechter to OTW, “patients were highly satisfied, and younger patients were significantly more satisfied than older patients. Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems scores were also compared with patients who did not experience telerounding. Those who did teleround with the surgeon tended to rate their hospital experience and their interaction with the surgeon higher.”

“In a sense the only surprise was in the extremely high satisfaction scores that patients rated the telerounding experience. This was somewhat unexpected, but may speak to the importance of establishing a trusted doctor-patient relationship preoperatively. In turn, a patient confident in their surgeon may rate their postoperative interaction with the surgeon very highly even when conducted via a televideo platform.”