Experience of Patients Utilizing the COVID-19 Services of the Employees' Clinic of a Tertiary Hospital during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-sectional Study.

Background: Patient experience is the interaction with the healthcare system and is one of the three pillars of quality in healthcare. Its assessment provides an opportunity to assure quality of care, meet patients' expectations, direct strategic decision making, and document benchmarks for healthcare organizations.The onset of the pandemic pushed the employees' clinic to institute new processes and focus on COVID-19 screening and monitoring of affected employees. The clinic used patient feedback to improve its services.A survey tool was developed and released by the clinic in June 2020 to elicit feedback and improve its services. Most items were yes/no questions and patients were asked to rate based on a Likert scale of 0-5 for the other items. They were also given space for their additional comments/feedback.

Objective: The study described the experience of patients utilizing the COVID-19 services of the employees' clinic of a tertiary hospital.

Methods: This was a cross-sectional study that involved a retrospective review of all data retrieved from the feedback forms from those who availed the COVID-19 services of the employees' clinic, namely consultation, swabbing, and/or telemonitoring, from June 2020 to December 2021.

Results: A total of 4,136 feedback forms were retrieved from the employees' clinic. There were 1,598 forms from consultation, 1,268 forms from swabbing and 1,270 forms from telemonitoring. A total of 456 comments were positive and 275 were negative. Most forms listed receiving an introduction from their physician/nurse (92.74%) and received instructions for swabbing (90.43%) during consultation. For swabbing, most received information regarding their schedule (95.43%). Almost all forms listed receiving SMS or calls (98.74%) and information regarding return-to-work or admission (96.14%) from the telemonitoring service. Only about half were able to discuss fears and anxieties (48.76%) during consultation and about two-thirds (68.93%) received information regarding their RT-PCR results. Feedback stated that the clinic staff were respectful and courteous, and the service hours were convenient. However, concerns with data privacy were apparent.

Conclusion: Overall patient experience was generally positive despite the rapidly changing processes of the clinic.