Patient Preferences for Telerehabilitation Compared to In-Person Physiotherapy: A Binary Discrete Choice Experiment.

Objective: To investigate the key factors that influence patients' preferences for telerehabilitation consultations in comparison to traditional in-person physiotherapy consultations and explore how these factors vary across different patient demographic characteristics.

Methods: A binary discrete choice experiment was conducted with 152 participants who had participated in physiotherapy. The primary outcome measures were the attributes related to telerehabilitation and in-person consultations, including appointment duration, cost, distance, purpose, therapist, time of day, and wait time. Participants' preferences were assessed based on their choices in the binary choice experiment.

Results: The study did not identify any attributes of consultations that clearly influenced patients' preference for telerehabilitation versus in-person physiotherapy. There was a trend towards preferring telerehabilitation with decreased appointment wait times and lower monetary costs. Patient demographics revealed that individuals with a single chronic health condition were clearly less inclined towards telerehabilitation (OR = 0.5, 95% CI 0.27-0.93), as were those located in outer regional locations (OR = 0.34, 95% CI 0.12-0.99). Additionally, respondents preferring a short 5 km travel distance showed markedly lower preference for telerehabilitation (β_{Telerehab×Distance_5km} = -0.94, 95% CI -4.34 to -0.51, p < 0.001).

Conclusion: To enable broader access to physiotherapy via telerehabilitation, clinicians, and policymakers should prioritize offering timely and cost-effective sessions. The results of this study can then inform the development of telerehabilitation offerings that are better matched to patient preferences.