Item 3

"I am confident that using telehealth will help me accomplish things more quickly" obtained the

third highest mean rating of 3.33 which equated to a "very high level of acceptability" in the

overall descriptive rating. This may be due to the use of devices for communicating with a

healthcare provider, which is more accessible for the respondents to use especially those who

live in rural areas. The use of devices such as smartphones can be handy because they can

multitask in their daily activities while doing the consultation, thus, this saves more time because

they will no longer need to prepare and travel to be able to visit the hospital for consultation.

Consequently, due to travel expenses, regular hospital visits can be costly, especially in rural

areas. People choose telehealth in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic when physical interaction

is risky. When telehealth services are used via video conferencing or other virtual technologies,

medical visits can be minimized. As a result, telehealth saves time and money for both the

patient and the healthcare practitioner. Today, this technology provides a safe option for people

who are unable to visit a doctor or sit at home, particularly in the event of a pandemic (Haleem,

et al., 2021).

On Place of Residence

It further showed that there is no significant relationship between the level of acceptability of the

respondents and their place of residence. This is supported by computer r-values which failed to

attain the correlation at 0.05 level of significance. This may be due to unfamiliarity with the

telehealth services offered by the city health office. Unawareness of this type of program by the

local government may lead the residents of Vigan to not be able to access its services.
According to Howren (2021), telehealth expansion is particularly important for rural and

underserved populations as it represents a medium to increase access and reduce disparities in

health care delivery. Moreover, a majority indicated that they either would not use telehealth for

any care or prefer to receive most or all care in person once the COVID-19 crisis subsides.

Moreover, Gurupur et al. (2016) also suggested that the patients were ready, but not very well

informed and trained. They also added that to stimulate the rapid adoption of telehealth, efforts

are needed to remove the barriers identified in this study by adopting an optimum strategy for

efficient and effective utilization of telehealth services.