Health Care Providers' Perspectives on a Hybrid Outpatient Stroke Telerehabilitation Program: Qualitative Implementation Study.

Only 14 clinicians took part, all at one urban rehabilitation hospital. The authors note that findings may not transfer to rural programs, where internet access and distance to in-person care raise different problems. Participants volunteered from a single outpatient unit mailing list, so the people who took part may have been the more involved or more favourable ones; colleagues who were less involved or more critical may be missing from these views. Physiotherapists and occupational therapists made up most of the sample. The authors say that including more social workers and speech-language pathologists could have shown how virtual care fits those disciplines, so the picture is thinnest exactly where the team was quietest. The study reports what clinicians think, not what happened to patients. No patient outcomes or system measures were collected, and patient and family views were gathered in a separate study reported elsewhere. Member checking was not done, because of time and budget; the authors argue that triangulation, reflexivity and an audit trail support the credibility of the analysis instead.

The study was funded by an AFP Innovation Fund Grant of CAD $104,999 (US $76,029.25) over 2 years starting in 2023. The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The program being evaluated is the one running at the authors' study site.

Do not read this as evidence that hybrid or virtual stroke rehabilitation works. The study measured no patient outcomes. It reports what 14 clinicians at one urban hospital said about a program they work in, recruited from a single mailing list, and those who volunteered may be more positive about the program than colleagues who did not.