Virtual Care: Perspectives From Family Physicians.

BACKGROUND: During the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual care expanded rapidly at Michigan Medicine and other health systems. From family physicians' perspectives, this shift to virtual care has the potential to affect workflow, job satisfaction, and patient communication. As clinics reopened and care delivery models shifted to a combination of in-person and virtual care, the need to understand physician experiences with virtual care arose in order to improve both patient and provider experiences. This study investigated Michigan Medicine family medicine physicians' perceptions of virtual care through qualitative interviews to better understand how to improve the quality and effectiveness of virtual care for both patients and physicians.

METHODS: We employed a qualitative descriptive design to examine physician perspectives through semistructured interviews. We coded and analyzed transcripts using thematic analysis, facilitated by MAXQDA (VERBI) software.

RESULTS: The results of the analysis identified four major themes: (a) chief concerns that are appropriate for virtual evaluation, (b) physician perceptions of patient benefits, (c) focused but contextually enriched patient-physician communication, and (d) structural support needed for high-quality virtual care.

CONCLUSIONS: These findings can help further direct the discussion of how to make use of resources to improve the quality and effectiveness of virtual care.