Patient Preference for Telehealth Background Shapes Impressions of Physicians and Information Recall: A Randomized Experiment

Introduction:Telehealth is increasing rapidly as a health care delivery platform, but we lack empirical evidence regarding how telehealth environments can affect patient experiences. The present research determined how physician’s telehealth backgrounds affect various patient outcomes.

Methods:Participants viewed a 30-s video of a physician with one of six different virtual backgrounds and reported various socioemotional and cognitive responses to the mock telehealth experience.

Results:Although the telehealth background manipulation did not impact participants’ socioemotional or cognitive responses, participants’ subjective perceptions of the telehealth backgrounds were related to important clinical outcomes, such as their ability to remember critical information from the appointment and overall satisfaction with the experience.

Discussion:Telehealth environments may result in tradeoffs between patient experience, subjective impressions of clinicians, and information recall.

Conclusions:A physician’s telehealth background can have measurable impact on patients’ telehealth experiences, suggesting a need for careful background selection and design.