Clemens Scott Kruse|Katharine Heinemann
Facilitators and Barriers to the Adoption of Telemedicine During the First Year of COVID-19: Systematic Review
Texas State University|Texas State University
background virulent unpredictable nature covid19 combined change reimbursement mechanisms forced enabled rapid adoption telemedicine around world thus important assess effects rapid adoption determine whether barriers adoption today prepandemic conditions objective objective systematic literature review examine research literature published covid19 pandemic identify facilitators barriers associated medical outcomes result adopting telemedicine determine changes occurred industry time methods systematic review performed accordance kruse protocol results reported accordance prisma preferred reporting items systematic reviews metaanalyses guidelines analyzed 46 research articles five continents published first year covid19 pandemic retrieved searches four research databases pubmed medline cinahl science direct web science results reviewers identified 25 facilitator themes observations 12 barrier themes observations 14 results compared control group themes observations overall 22 articles analyzed reported strong satisfaction satisfaction zero reported decline satisfaction 27 reported improvement administrative efficiency results compared control group 14 reported statistically significant difference control group 40 10 reported improvement statistically significant difference medical outcomes using telemedicine modality control group respectively conclusions pandemic encouraged rapid adoption telemedicine also encouraged practices adopt modality regardless challenges identified previous research several barriers remain health policymakers address however health care administrators feel confident modality evidence largely shows safe effective widely accepted