A new study finds that the room in which a doctor or health care worker conducts a remote telehealth visit has an effect on patients’ confidence in their care:
Americans have gotten used to seeing their doctors and other health care providers using telehealth video visits in the past four years. But a new study reveals that what a doctor has behind them during a telehealth visit can make a difference in how the patient feels about them and their care.The findings come from a survey that asked patients to react to seven different backgrounds behind a model physician, and to rate how knowledgeable, trustworthy, caring, approachable and professional the physician appeared in each, and how comfortable the patient would feel with that provider. It also asked them to consider each background for a first or returning appointment with a primary care or specialty provider.
Telehealth has become more common since Covid. A while back I wrote, “Anxious, Depressed? There’s an App for that.” It was about new telehealth mental health apps that match people needing therapy with counselors. One app allows patients to select, contact and even make video calls to a counselor by phone or some combination including talk, email and text. One patient complained that his therapist didn’t seem very professional. During one video session, he could see someone in the background preparing dinner. Another video counseling session was conducted from a moving car, which stopped for gas during his session. His therapist later admitted that she was forced to move back home and live with her parents during Covid. Her parents’ home did not have enough rooms for dedicated office space for her counseling session, so she had to make do with what she had. This reduced her patient’s confidence in her counseling.
The lead author of the study on telehealth office environment explained that some guidance on “website manner” has been debated, advising doctors and other telehealth professionals how should interact with patients. However, little if anything had been written or researched on the visual environment and background images during the telehealth visit.
The office/clinical environment in a video telehealth screen has an impact on how patients perceive their telehealth visit and presumably how they perceive their doctor’s competence. Some results from the study on what patients see from their monitor screen:
Even if the doctor is miles away from their usual in-person clinic or exam room, they should make it look like they’re there, the study suggests.Even better: sitting in an office with their diplomas hanging behind them — or perhaps having a virtual background that’s a photo of such an office. This is especially true if they haven’t seen the patient before, the study shows.A home office with a bookshelf or a plain solid-color background are both acceptable to patients, too.But providers should use blurred or virtual backgrounds if they carry out the visit in a home environment with a kitchen or a bed in the background, the study shows.
The study appeared in the journal JAMA Network Open. The lead researcher said that the move to remote care came quickly without specific guidance. In the survey patients really disliked seeing a kitchen or a bedroom in the background during their telehealth visit, with more than 96% saying they did not care for it. When given a choice of different settings more than one-third preferred an office setting with diplomas displayed in the background.
The results of the survey can be summed up as “appearance matters,” as it does in most professional work environments.
Another option is to create virtual backgrounds that will evoke these types of professional settings.
In the age of YouTube projecting an office appearance is easy. Just today I was watching a video of a man answering subscribers’ questions about his airplane from inside his aircraft hangar, except around 20 seconds into the video he admitted he was not really inside his hangar. It’s very cold in Northern Ohio in February and his hangar is not heated. The image of him standing in his hangar briefly flashes to a green screen illustrating he was in a home studio. A physician or counselor just needs a desk as a prop with a green screen behind it to make it appear they’re in an office. The technology is cheap and easy to use.
The entire article is worth reading, but the results are not surprising. See: “The doctor is in…. but what’s behind them?”