...Now we have the option of getting a consultation online or via telemedicine. Amwell has been providing direct to consumer telehealth medicine since 2009. Not only is it convenient, online visits are cost effective. Consumers save time, accessibility and have lower fees. Amwell is largest telehealth company in the country that offers a variety of care from Trauma to substance abuse. Overview of AmWell Tired of having to make an appointment to see a doctor or visit your nearest clinic when symptoms of health concerns strike? Well, there's a new breakthrough in technology. A mobile healthcare service that is available on your cell phone or mobile device. Just download the App "AmWell" (American Well) allows you to connect instantly with a doctor by downloading the App from your smartphone or mobile device. Whether you connect with your actual doctor or choose one from the network providers. This technology is sweeping the nation. Blue Cross and Blue Shield has joined the partnership to provide its members with easy access to available healthcare. The joint effort of the two is available in 26 states. That's half of America (American Well, 2015). Founded by Doctors Ido and Ray Schoenberg. It is there mission to “improve access to quality care (Amwell, 2014).” American Well products and services range from software, clinical services to telehealth services. Reaching out to health plans, employers or a delivery network. American Well wants to connect you live. Their...
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...Telehealth…. The Future is now Sandra M. Sielinski Chamberlain College of Nursing Abstract Tele-health is defined as “The use of health informatics, disease management, and home telehealth technologies to enhance and extend care and case management to facilitate access to care and improve the health of designated individuals and populations with the specific intent of providing the right care in the right place at the right time.” (Barr, McElnay, & Hughes, 2010) Telehealth services can offer timely and cost effective alternative means to healthcare for a patient, but nurses need to be aware of the less visible potential effects of providing nursing care, thus needing to more specific and more focused in their patient assessment. While telehealth has the potential to offer patients and nurses easier access to each other, privacy and ethical concerns are now more prevalent when it comes to the use of telehealth. (Hebda & Czar, 2013) Properly secured communications are a must-have in the telehealth industry. Advantages and Disadvantages While most people think that telehealth is a more recent venture based on current technology, it actually originated in 1980 when the United States Government ”played a major role in development and promotion of teleheath through various agencies” (Hebda & Czar, 2013)When government funding decreased, interest in telehealth subsided until the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development Act of 1991 renewed interest with...
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...Wesley D. Pointjour Final Research Paper: Telehealth In Nursing Homes Health Quality Management April 02, 2015 Introduction In many nursing home facilities, patient safety is little to non-existent and if they are, there displayed on a need be and not obliged basis. They are displayed case by case rather than nursing home protocol. Even with changes in regulations, reporting systems, and documentation over the past couple of years, the nursing home industry still has its share of problems. Patient safety is meant to provide patients freedom from healthcare associated preventable harm, meaning when things go right, nothing bad happens. Nursing home organizations have been constantly trying to improve their reputation and the way people view them, but how? Don’t patients make up a nursing home? What about their safety? Shouldn’t we start there? How do we make improvements? Telehealth, a new approach to improving patient safety in nursing homes, will use telecommunication technologies to deliver health related services and information that support patient care, administrative activities, and health education (Dixon, Hook, McGowan, 2008). In this paper I will explore the major benefits of Telehealth and how its implications can improve patient safety in nursing home care. What is Telehealth and why is it important? Telehealth is the means and methods to improving access to care and reducing healthcare associated costs. It is also a system that can be used for education...
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...Telehealth utilizes electronic data and telecommunications to support long-distance, clinician-based patient and professional health education, public health and health administration (HHS, 2013). Components of telehealth include videoconferencing, the internet, store-and-forward imaging, streaming media, terrestrial and wireless communications (HHS, 2013). Telehealth systems such as the Health Resources and Services Administration aims to increase and improve the use of telehealth to meet the needs of its underserved patients by (HHS, 2013): •Developing relationships within HRSA and other Federal agencies, states and private organizations to create telehealth projects. •Administers telehealth grant programs. •Provides technical support. •Evaluation of telehealth technology and programs. •Development of telehealth policy initiatives aimed at improving care access and quality health services. •Promotion of knowledge exchange regarding best telehealth practices. Telehealth is an invaluable addition to multiple care settings. Store-and-forward programs provide the smaller hospital to draw upon the knowledge of its much larger counterparts (HHS, 2013). As such, teleradiology and teledermatology programs are of particular interest to critical care facilities and rural health centers (HHS, 2013). Applications such as teleradiology and remote EKG services carry a greater likelihood of being covered by third party payers as they do not typically involve...
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...the organization. What is Telemonitoring? Key information technology application domains in health care include telemedicine and home telecare. On the one hand, telemedicine is defined as the direct provision of clinical care, including diagnosing, treating, or consultation, via telecommunications for a patient at a distant (Wainwright &Wootton, 2003). Remote monitoring, or telemonitoring, can be regarded as a subdivision of telemedicine, which is the use of electronic and telecommunications technologies to provide and support health care when distance separates the participants (Nangalia, Prytherch, & Smith, 2010). According to the Phillips National Study on Home Care Technology and Telehealth, co-sponsored by NAHC and conducted by Fazzi Associates, only 17.1% of U.S. agencies currently use telehealth. However, the study found that this number is expected to double within the next two years (Kelly & Christians, 2012). Telemonitoring includes the use of remote monitoring...
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...that we would be having an in-service on a new telehealth monitoring device we would be using for our high risk patients. We were shown how to operate the monitors and was demonstrated all of its capabilities. The telephone based devices had an interactive voice response system that could remotely monitor a patient’s blood pressure, heart rate, O2 saturation, weight and blood sugar via a telephone connection. The devices were recommended for all cardiac and respiratory patients who were at high risk for re-hospitalization since the devices would be able to recognize early symptoms and help the nurses to make quick decisions about the patients’ plan of care. So what is telenursing and telehealth? Hebda & Czar (2013), states that “telenursing is the use of telecommunications and information technology (IT) for the delivery of nursing care”. Telehealth is “the use of telecommunications technologies and electronic information to exchange healthcare information and to provide and support services such as long-distance clinical healthcare to clients”. Although, telenursing is still a fairly new concept to me, there is documentation of telenursing in the 1970’s. The first published telenursing article was written by Mary Quinn, RN in 1974. She described seeing patients remotely at Logan airport while working in a Boston Hospital telemedicine Center. (American Telemedicine Association, 2011). Fast forward to today and telehealth, telemedicine, and telenursing are common words...
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...The use of research in telehealth implementations | | | Recent advances in, and increasing availability and utilisation of technology are presenting opportunities to provide greater access to services for those who live in regional and remote locations. This is particularly the case in health, where specialist services are usually limited to metropolitan areas. Those who live in regional or remote locations are therefore often required to travel long distances to gain access to these services (Wootton, 1998 and WHO 2010). Telehealth has many perceived benefits including the potential for enhancing access, quality, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness (Craig and Patterson, 2005). Additionally, evidence suggests many socioeconomic benefits to patients, families, health practitioners and the health system, including enhanced patient-provider communication and educational opportunities (Wootton, 1998 and Jennett et al. 2003). This is particularly useful for communities traditionally underserved – those in remote or rural areas with few health services and staff – as telehealth lessons the barriers of distance and time to specialised services. While technology exists that facilitates the provision of these specialist services - unfortunately they are not always utilised with many projects not proceeding beyond the pilot phase (Klecun-Dabrowska, 2003) and even worse, according to one estimate, three quarters of healthcare ICT implementations are considered failures...
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...BRIEF COMMUNICATION Clinical Telehealth Across the Disciplines: Lessons Learned Sandra Jarvis-Selinger, Ph.D.,1,2 Elmira Chan, M.Ed.,2 Ryan Payne, B.A.,2 Kerenza Plohman, LLM,2 and Kendall Ho, M.D., FRCPSC2,3 cost and remuneration issues, development of organizational protocols for system use, and strategies to promote interprofessional collaboration). 1 Department of Surgery, 2Division of Continuing Professional Development and Knowledge Translation, 3Division of Emergency Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Key words: clinical telehealth, videoconferencing, literature review, quality of service Introduction Abstract Videoconferencing technologies can vastly expand the reach of healthcare practitioners by providing patients (particularly those in rural/remote areas) with unprecedented access to services. While this represents a fundamental shift in the way that healthcare professionals care for their patients, very little is known about the impact of these technologies on clinical workflow practices and interprofessional collaboration. In order to better understand this, we have conducted a focused literature review, with the aim of providing policymakers, administrators, and healthcare professionals with an evidence-based foundation for decision-making. A total of 397 articles focused on videoconferencing in clinical contexts were retrieved, with 225 used to produce this literature review. Literature in the fields...
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...Sicotte 2007) such as blood glucose monitors (Novik and Hinton 2007). Home telemonitoring has a tendency to emphasize outcome measurements that is exemplified in monitoring for falls (Karantonis 2006). Telehomecare refers to use of ICT-enabled health services and virtual visits of providers, for instance nurses (Bowles and Baugh 2007) for effective delivery of care and management of patients with chronic diseases at their homes. Telehealth refers to the provision of health-related services, home health and patient education at a distance using telecommunication technologies (Wootton, Blignault and Cignoli 2003). Telephone-based care service can combine telemonitoring with health messages that promote the avoidance of bad outcomes and engender patient understanding for adherence to care plans. These will be further discussed in the section...
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...were used along with Artic health databases. Abstracts and full articles were review, and categorized into four sections. Organizational structure of health services, telehealth, ehealth, and medical transportation. “Despite the challenges facing rural and remote regions, there is a distinctly positive message from this broad literature review. Evidence-based initiatives exist across a range of areas - which include operational efficiency and integration, access to care, organizational structure, public health, continuing education and workforce composition that have the potential to positively impact health care quality and health-related outcomes” (Masucci, Mitton, & Dionne, 2011). The literature review did not identify any past research associated with new ideas to improve access, quality, and efficiency in the organizational structures and delivery of health care services in northern rural and remote and rural populations. This review was directed toward the redesign of health care systems in Nunavut territory in Canada. When conducting research in an academic or professional setting, it is important to display ethical responsibility throughout the research study. For instance, Researchers conducting the study and collecting data should obtain permission from individuals who are involved in the study in any way....
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...proposed as one strategy to improve local trauma care and decrease disparities between rural and urban trauma outcomes.” (p.1.) This study focused on an emergency room’s use of telemedicine in North Dakota. The type of telemedicine device used in the study was “a high-resolution video camera, microphone, and television [that] are installed in the trauma bay of the rural hospital, and a button on the wall initiates immediate consultation with providers in the hub.” (p.2) On this device you could also arrange an inter-hospital transfer. According to Nicholas M. Mohr et. al. (2017), the results and conclusions of this study are as follows. There were 7,500 trauma patients seen in an emergency room. Of those patients, “telemedicine was consulted for 11% of patients in telemedicine-capable EDs and 4% of total trauma patients.” (p.1) The use of telemedicine by itself was “associated with decreased initial ED length of stay for transferred patients.” (p.1) Telemedicine being available was attributed to an increase in transfers between hospitals. This is important because if one hospital is not equipped to help someone, they can quickly get them somewhere else. Refer to Figure 1 in...
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...Access to knowledge and information in the full electronic health record is important for the provider to review the full extensive background of each patient. Ideally, physicians have the patient’s medical history to refer to while providing care, which should be coordinated with physicians who are already treating the patient. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. A recent study by The Wall Street Journal (2006) revealed that in an online clinician encounter, patients were asked the name of their primary-care physician in 13 of the 62 visits, and only six offered to send records of the encounter to an existing doctor. This illustrates the fragmentation of medical record retrieval and demonstrates how information could be omitted or...
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...introducing new initiatives to reduce rehospitalizations and ultimately improve patient outcomes. Hospitals are under tremendous pressure to reduce their avoidable rehospitalization rates. In October 2012, hospitals started being penalized for having higher readmission rates. Jenks estimates that readmissions within thirty days of discharge cost Medicare more than seventeen billion dollars annually (Jenks, Williams, and Coleman, 2009). There is no doubt that readmissions following a hospitalization are very costly. This issue is critical in nursing today because skyrocketing costs can affect salaries and poor outcomes can be blamed on poor care. The quest for better outcomes proves to be a collaborative effort between hospitals, physicians, case managers, therapists, social workers and caregivers. In May of 2008 St Luke’s Hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa implemented a transitions in care program. They understood that the hand off from hospital to home was not working effectively. They focused on being sure that the patient as well as the care givers understood the patients diagnosis, plan of care and plan for follow up care with their doctors. They used the “teach back” method, by having the patients teach the nurses it allowed them to verbalize what they know and engage them in their own learning. The focus was on their heart failure patients and their readmission rate started at twelve percent. After education and discharging to home care, who was able to reinforce and continue...
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...faced by healthcare providers will affect patient care in the years ahead. Healthcare providers are taking advantage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) stimulus funding to launch telehealth initiatives to face down some of healthcare’s most daunting challenges. According to the American Telemedicine Association: "Telemedicine is the use of medical information exchanged from one site to another via electronic communications to improve patients' health status. Closely associated with telemedicine is the term 'telehealth,' which is often used to encompass a broader definition of remote health care that does not always involve clinical services. Videoconferencing, transmission of still images, e-health including patient portals, remote monitoring of vital signs, continuing medical education and nursing call centers are all considered part of telemedicine and telehealth." Following decades of media attention focused on the potential for telemedicine to transform health care delivery, the technology has matured, as has the acceptance of its use among providers and payers. 2. The Value of Telehealth/Telemedicine Telehealth enables collaboration across the healthcare ecosystem, regardless of where patients and healthcare providers are located. As a result, telehealth delivers several major benefits to healthcare providers. First, clinical specialists can make their services more accessible to a broader audience. They can cost effectively reach more patients...
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...How do new technologies impact on workforce organisation? Rapid review of international evidence Report developed by The Evidence Centre for Skills for Health Contents Key Themes ............................................................................................................................................ 3 Scope .................................................................................................................................................................... 3 How are teams being organised?.......................................................................................................... 7 Substituting grades and roles ............................................................................................................................... 7 Reducing staff or team size .................................................................................................................................. 8 Empowering patients............................................................................................................................................. 9 Changing the place of care ................................................................................................................................. 10 Working across organisations ............................................................................................................................. 10 Working across regional areas .........................
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