Adam J. Gadzinski, MD, MS, on Study Results Assessing the Impact of Telemedicine on Patient-Reported Outcomes

In a study presented at the Society of Urologic Oncology 21st Annual Meeting, researchers sought to determine the impact of a rurally focused telemedicine program on patient outcomes in the urologic oncology outpatient clinic at the University of Washington Medical Center (UWMC).

In an interview with CancerNetwork®, Adam J. Gadzinski, MD, MS, urologic oncology fellow and an acting instructor of Urologic Oncology at the Urology Clinic at UWMC, discussed the findings from this study.

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So, what we found is that overall patient satisfaction was generally the same between both in person and telemedicine visits. But, no surprises, telemedicine didn't require essentially any travel, and at the University of Washington we tend to be a referral center for the state of Alaska and some of the other Pacific Northwest states, so some of our patients were spending a tremendous amount of money just to come and see us for outpatient visit appointments. And of our in-person visits, we found that almost 10% were spending over $1000 to come and see us in person, not to have surgery, just for an office visit; and telemedicine eliminated essentially all of those travel costs.