Kudos to Stephanie Ibemere, postdoc, and her entire team for the submission of her Southern Nursing Research Society (SNRS) proposal entitled: “Comparison of Nurse Practitioner Satisfaction with In-Person and/or Telehealth (telephone/video) Visits for Chronic Disease Management." This proposal requests funding for a one-year period with a start date of February 1, 2021.

Chronic diseases in the United States (U.S.) are very common and account for significant morbidity and mortality, including accounting for 70% of all deaths annually. Nurse practitioners (NP) provide a critical role in outpatient, clinic based chronic disease management in the U.S. Changes in health policy due to COVID-19 have allowed billing of telehealth (telephone and video) visits. Anecdotally, advantages and disadvantages of this delivery mode have been reported. To inform future health policy development and best practices for telehealth visits, it is important to fully explore satisfaction with this health care delivery mode.

We propose to survey a nationally representative sample of 300 NPs (expected minimum) across the US to determine their satisfaction with and preference for in-person and telehealth visits for outpatient chronic disease management. We will administer the Care Delivery Satisfaction survey, adapted for chronic disease management from three existing survey tools.

Overall NP satisfaction will be derived from summing the scores from these domains: General Satisfaction, Technical Quality of Care, Interpersonal Manner, Communication, Financial Aspects, Time, Accessibility, Physical Environment and Equipment. For more granular detail, we will also conduct 15 interviews with NP’s who completed the survey.