Impression of Telemedicine on Patient Happiness on the way to health Services

The aim of this study was to analyze the Impact of information technology (IT) and patient satisfaction on Telemedicine in the rural health care Services. Through the telemedicine facility, patients from rural areas can receive specialist consultation for all health problems from skilled doctors.

The impact of IT, Patient‘s expectation about quality of service (SQ), Clinical Governance (G), Patient relationship with professional (PR) and Patient‘s satisfaction (PS) variables has been tested through structural equation modeling techniques. The sample consisted of 356 rural personnel from the Madurai District of Tamilnadu, India, who accessed the telemedicine at Primary Health Centers at Madurai District.

Information Technology variables have significant influence on over all information technology. Service quality variables performed as mediator role in the patient satisfaction. This result shows that information related to telemedicine helps the patient to understand about their health issues and treatment. Patient relationship and Innovation has a significant influence on service quality. Ease of use of IT, Patient relationship, Governance has no significant influence on patient satisfaction.

Health service providers and health officials should understand the patients profiles and create a cordial relationship with them. This is highly expected by the patient respondents. Hence telemedicine helps both service users and clinicians and putting less strain on resources. But inaccurate and unstructured information, poor service, privacy, communication of the information, frequency of the visits and accuracy in the details of the reports are major issues for the success for Telemedicine in rural areas.