The transgender and gender diverse (TGD) patient population consists of a diverse group of people with unique needs who have, unfortunately, been underserved by the medical community. These individuals share a disproportionate burden of discrimination and disease when compared to cisgender persons. However, despite this, they continue to receive inequitable treatment, and transgender health topics still comprise just a small portion of medical education training. While efforts to improve awareness and training regarding transgender health care needs are underway, these take time to gain traction. It also relies heavily on changing medical providers’ own biases. Telemedicine has been proposed as a way to potentially bridge the gap and increase the access and availability of quality, informed medical care to this community. Although telemedicine has demonstrated its ability to do this in other areas of medicine, the existing research on whether it has the capacity to do so for transgender health care delivery is scant. The majority of the existing literature on the topic consists of retrospective qualitative feedback provided during a time where telemedicine was still emerging as a commonplace medium through which medical care is provided. Therefore, this thesis proposes to perform a randomized controlled trial investigating whether instituting a hybrid telemedicine approach has the capability to expand the accessibility of specialty transgender health care services as compared to fully in person medical care while maintaining a high standard of health care quality and patient satisfaction. This study would have the capacity to help inform future health care policy and provide support for continued telemedicine offerings and reimbursement moving forward.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/47464 |
| Date | 03 November 2023 |
| Creators | Phillips, Brittany |
| Contributors | Streed, Jr., Carl G., Weinstein, John R. |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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