Limitations
The results of this study are certainly influenced by the social context and implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. An additional question administered to the patients allowed them to express concern about their health during COVID-19: this question had an average score of 5.03. As expected, patients with ongoing cancer treatment were more likely to worry about their health than those who had finished oncology treatment. In addition, many patients would qualify high scores by adding that they thought telehealth visits were appropriate in response to the ongoing pandemic.
Additional limitations of this study include bias in patient selection and response bias of those completing the survey. Only patients with video-based telemedicine visits were contacted to participate. Patients who did not have access to these platforms or the requisite technology and services were offered telephone calls with audio only. Notably, successful use of a telemedicine platform requires a baseline knowledge of technology and access to a smartphone or home brand.38 Thus, this study did not capture the results of patients who due to socioeconomic circumstances or low technology literacy were unable to have a video-based telemedicine visit. This was the case for 23 patients among 145 total patients who completed a telemedicine over the course of one month. This study also suffered from some of the inherent issues with telemedicine research. Generally, patients report high levels of satisfaction with the healthcare they receive.25The majority of patients in this study have established relationships with their physicians and thus could have had trouble separating their satisfaction from their care in general with their satisfaction pertaining to the telehealth visit. To limit this, the purpose of the study was explained and this distinction was explicitly addressed prior to administration of the survey.