Assessment of patient satisfaction of telehealth based services to underserved communities in rural Texas

Introduction

In the US, 20% of the population lives in rural areas, and Texas has some of the largest rural counties. Throughout the country the provision of health care is disproportionately distributed to urban areas with more health care facilities. Due to these disparities in health care, thousands of people in rural Texas communities are not receiving the mental health services they require. The Brazos Valley, Texas has five counties that are designated as Mental Health Provider Shortage Areas. With televideo conferencing counseling (telehealth) showing promising results in the mental health field, patient response and satisfaction of telehealth based services provided by the Telehealth Counselling Clinic (TCC) was investigated.

Method

Participants from five counties within the Brazos Valley participated in telehealth counseling. 278 individuals from the population received counselling via a HIPPA compliant T1 line and high definition television. A subsample was given a satisfaction survey at intake and termination.

Results

70% of the participants strongly agreed and 25% somewhat agreed that the care they received was as good as if they met the counselor in person, while 5% were not sure. 100% of participants agreed they would use TCC services again.

Discussion

Although telehealth in health care face numerous challenges such as lack of in-person rapport building,the Telehealth counseling clinic has been successful with positive results and high patient satisfaction rates in mental health services rendered to people of low socio-economic status in the rural parts of Texas.