Evaluation of Electronic-Clinic Services in Basrah, Southern Iraq, During the COVID-19 Era: A Descriptive Study

Background: Few studies have attempted to evaluate the organizational impact of telemedicine and the associated process changes that affect the way that it is used and accepted. Objective: To evaluate the degree of satisfaction of both the doctors who participated in electronic clinics and the patients who benefitted from it by inquiring about suggestions for optimization. Method: An online survey was conducted in which both the patients and the doctors were blinded; the link for the inquiry was sent to them without any recognizable names attached by a personnel from outside the research group. Responses were gathered and analyzed, and relevant graphs and tables were constructed using Microsoft Excel. Results: A total of 277 patient responses were analyzed. The most common platform for obtaining information about the electronic clinics was social media. It was observed that 77.7% of the respondents were satisfied with e-clinic, 85.5% found the service easy, 75.1% felt it was trustful, and 50.5% found the time available to be adequate. Among the respondents, 83.4% intend to resort to electronic counseling in the future. Most of the doctors who participated in e-clinics were pediatricians (25%), followed by otorhinolaryngiologists (22%). Most doctors enrolled in the service because they wanted to help the people (41.8%). WhatsApp (58.2%), Facebook (44.8%), and phone calls (40.3%) were the most common platforms for consultation. Among the doctors, 53.7% responded that the experience was successful, 43.3% recommended continuing the service throughout the course of the pandemic, and 53.7% recommended continuing even after the pandemic comes to an end. Conclusions: Evaluation of the clinical service via the electronic survey revealed a spectrum of satisfactory responses from both the patients and the doctors who participated, and suggestions for technical optimizations and for the continuation of the service even beyond the pandemic were received.