Abstract No. 479 COVID-19–mediated percutaneous drain management and deferral: assessing patient experience with virtual visits

Purpose: During the COVID-19 pandemic, nonessential procedures were indefinitely deferred, including normally scheduled percutaneous drain injections, exchanges, removals, and repositioning (1) In these circumstances, telephonic and video-based follow-up have been substituted for traditional in-person care models at our institution’s interventional radiology (IR) clinic The purpose of this study was to assess patient perceptions and attitudes regarding virtual IR visits compared to traditional in-person visits as data on the patient experience of this care model is currently limited Materials and Methods: In this study, we enrolled all patients with a percutaneous drain placed by IR and scheduled for follow-up during the deferral period (March 19, 2020 to April 17, 2020) An internally validated survey was administered by telephone to patients assessing their experience of the virtual visit The survey contained 25 items with closed-ended responses in addition to the opportunity for open-ended comments and reflections at the conclusion of the survey Results: This study enrolled 54 patients (with 55 total drains) who were affected by the nonessential procedure deferral due to COVID-19 20 3% of patients agreed to participate in the study The mean age of respondents was 62 8 ± 20 0 years, and 8 respondents (72 7%) were male There were an equal number of telephone and video-based visits Patients perceived many benefits to virtual visits including increased access to care (81 8%), quicker time to appointment scheduling (88 9%), shorter waiting room wait time (77 8%), access to appointments when in-person appointments were not available due to COVID-19 (100%), and reduced transportation time (100%) 81 8% of patients reported no anxiety when compared to in-person visits 90 9% of patients reported that they would be definitely interested in using virtual visits in the future Conclusions: Both telephone and videoconferencing based virtual visits improved access to patient care when precautions during the COVID-19 pandemic limited in-person drain management More comprehensive data may be required to evaluate the appropriateness and impact of virtual visits and deferred in-person drain management procedures on patient outcomes and future care models