Patient experiences with a phone-based cardiovascular risk reduction intervention: Are there differences between women and men?

•Little is known about gender-based differences in technology-based care delivery acceptability.•Both women and men found proactive, convenient telehealthcare to be helpful.•Gender-based preferences for type of social support could inform tailoring of interventions for women.•Non-face-to-face care creates challenges to provider-patient relationships and may require purposeful rapport building. To explore gender-based differences in experiences with a telehealth-delivered intervention for reduction of cardiovascular risk. We conducted 23 semi-structured qualitative interviews by telephone with 11 women and 12 men who received a 12-month, pharmacist-delivered, telephone-based medication and behavioral management intervention. We used content analysis to identify themes. We identified three common themes for both men and women: ease and convenience of phone support, preference for proactive outreach, and need for trust building in the context of telehealth. While both genders appreciated the social support from the intervention pharmacist, women voiced appreciation for accountability whereas men generally spoke about encouragement. Rapport building may differ between telehealth and in-person healthcare visits; our work highlights how men and women’s experiences can differ with telehealth care and which can inform the development of future, purposeful rapport building activities to strengthen the clinician-patient interaction. Clinicians should seek opportunities to provide frequent and routine support for patients with chronic disease. Telehealth interventions may benefit from gender-specific tailoring of social support.