Determine neuromuscular patient satisfaction (established patients only) of telehealth as the prevalence of virtual appointments rise during COVID-19 pandemic.

There are limited data on telehealth satisfaction among patients with neuromuscular diseases except for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Patients completed a telehealth satisfaction survey during tele-medicine clinic for return visits and rated eight aspects from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree): Communication, timeliness of physician, picture quality, sound quality, protection of privacy, comfort of physical exam, ease of healthcare, and whether patients would prefer “in-person” visits despite safety precaution. We received 50 surveys from a cohort of 90. We performed one-sample T-tests for each survey component and compared responses to a value of “3” corresponding to “neutral”. After averaging individual survey responses, we performed independent T-tests and ANOVA to determine the relationship of demographic factors to average satisfaction ratings.

Average age was 47.54 ± 20.63, M:F ratio of 23:27, rural to urban ratio of 35:15, and 30 of 50 patients had family present webside while 7 of 50 had family present remotely. 44 out of 50 patients were Caucasian, while four were African-American and two were Hispanic. All patients responded to each survey component with mean score of  >4 (p < 0.05) with the exception of whether patients preferred in-person appointments (2.66 ± 0.63) which shows patients do not prefer in-person appointments.

Further analysis reveals there was no significant effect for gender, location, family present webside/remotely, ethnicity, or age (p > 0.05). The top three diagnoses include myasthenia gravis (4.54 ± 0.57), ALS (4.06 ± 0.26), and Charcot-Marie-Tooth type 1A (4.07 ± 0.71). There was no significant effect of diagnosis on average satisfaction ratings [F(19,28) = 1.97, p = 0.051].

Patients are satisfied with telehealth regardless of demographics. Future studies with larger sample sizes are required to confirm our results.