Abstract
Objective
To determine whether there is a difference in patient satisfaction between in-person
and virtual voice therapy.
Methods
Patient satisfaction answers to the National Research Corporation (NRC) Health patient
survey were retrieved for two separate 11 month periods. The first was for an in-person
cohort, from April 2019 to February 2020. The second was for a virtual cohort between
April 2020 and February 2021. Two group t tests or Wilcoxon rank sum tests were used to compare responses between the in-person
and virtual cohorts. The effect of modality of therapy by gender, age, and race was
examined by testing interactions with separate ANOVA models.
Results
Responses were compared between 224 patient satisfaction surveys for the virtual cohort
and 309 patient satisfaction surveys for the in-person cohort. Overall, responses
were highly favorable in all categories. There were no differences between the in-person
and virtual cohorts’ responses with respect to three main categories: likelihood of
future referral of clinic or provider; communication with provider; and comprehension
of the treatment plan. The interaction between modality of therapy delivery and age
was significant for the question, “Did you know what to do after your visit,” with
18-44 year olds in the in-person group reporting a better understanding of the treatment
plan compared to the 18-44 year olds in the virtual therapy cohort (P = 0.004). There were no interactions between modality of therapy and gender, or race.
Conclusion
Virtual delivery of voice therapy was associated with comparable visit satisfaction
scores to in-person delivery, with both delivery modalities demonstrating very high
satisfaction. Future studies are needed to identify which patients and conditions
are most suited for virtual versus in-person delivery of speech-language pathology
services in voice clinics.
Key Words
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Quick Facts: Minnesota. US Census report Available at: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/MN
Article info
Publication history
Published online: April 09, 2022
Accepted:
March 10,
2022
Publication stage
In Press Corrected ProofIdentification
Copyright
© 2022 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
