A telehealth intervention to increase patient preparedness for surgery: a randomized trial.

Methods to increase surgical preparedness in urogynecology are lacking. Our objective was to evaluate the impact of a preoperative provider-initiated telehealth call on surgical preparedness. This was a multicenter randomized controlled trial. Women undergoing surgery for pelvic organ prolapse and/or stress urinary incontinence were randomized to either a telehealth call 3 (± 2) days before surgery plus usual preoperative counseling versus usual preoperative counseling alone. Our primary outcome was surgical preparedness, as measured by the Preoperative Prepardeness Questionnaire. The Modified Surgical Pain Scale, Pelvic Floor Distress Inventory-20, Patient Global Impressions of Improvement, Patient Global Impressions of Severity, Satisfaction with Decision Scale, Decision Regret Scale, and Clavien–Dindo scores were obtained at 4–8 weeks postoperatively and comparisons were made between groups. Mean telehealth call time was 11.1 ± 4.11 min. Women who received a preoperative telehealth call (n = 63) were significantly more prepared for surgery than those who received usual preoperative counseling alone (n = 69); 82.5 vs 59.4%, p   0.05). A short preoperative telehealth call improves patient preparedness for urogynecological surgery.