Understanding Patient Engagement in Remote Consultation: A Comprehensive Review

The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of patient engagement in healthcare remote consultation services. The authors investigated the contextual factors that positively or negatively affect patient engagement, and discussed possible metrics to measure the different dimensions of engagement in various healthcare service stages, designed interventions, and potential improvement options for engagement. We undertook a comprehensive review of the extant literature using a systematic review approach. Sixty-three articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals from 2003 to 2022 were identified and analysed. We conceptualised engagement with patients in remote consultation across three key aspects: dimensions, process, as well as antecedents and consequences of engagement. We identified contextual factors that influence patient engagement in nine categories. We put forward several possible metrics for measuring patient engagement during three stages (before service, at service, and after service), as well as interventions and possible improvement options for increasing patient engagement. We contribute by putting forward a comprehensive framework for further investigating engagement in remote consultation. Our conceptual framework brings together different strengths of literature from different domains. We also extended service operations extant literature in deepening our understanding of the concept of engagement more broadly and applying it to the remote consultation service.