The acceptability of two remote monitoring modalities for patients waiting for services in a physiotherapy outpatient clinic.

Introduction: Access to public rehabilitation services for patients with non-urgent conditions - which suffer mainly from musculoskeletal disorders - is problematic around the world. Remote rehabilitation services are recognized as effective means to increase accessibility. Patient acceptability is an important element in the successful implementation of such clinical innovations and has not yet been studied thoroughly in this context. Thus, the aim of this study was to evaluate and compare the acceptability of two remote consultation modalities - phone and teleconsultation - for patients waiting for public outpatient non-urgent rehabilitation services.

Methods: We conducted a qualitative descriptive study nested within a randomized clinical trial in which participants received either phone or teleconsultation follow-ups with a physiotherapist after a first systematic face-to-face evaluation. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants of both groups selected with purposive sampling. Sekhon's acceptability metaframework was used and interviews were transcribed and coded with thematic analysis.

Ethic Approval: The research protocol was approved by the Research Ethics Board of the Centre intégré universitaire de santé et de services sociaux - Centre hospitalier universitaire de Sherbrooke (CIUSSS de l'Estrie - CHUS) (#2019-2919).

Results: Twenty participants were recruited. Results show both follow-up modalities have a good level of acceptability for participants; however, teleconsultation stands out because its visual dimension offers higher quality human contact and satisfactorily meets greater needs for support.

Conclusion: Systematic in-person assessment and advice combined with telephone or teleconsultation follow-up can contribute to diversifying the services offered in physiotherapy outpatient clinics. Offering a range of service modalities with different resource requirements may shorten wait times. Such an approach seems to be well accepted by patients, especially with teleconsultation.

Clinicaltrials: gov ID: NCT03991858.