...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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...new technology you don’t have to. Telehealth is a new emerging way to provide health care even to those in rural areas. This technology is especially important for those in northwest Alaska. The Maniilaq Association was formed to provide health and social services to people in the borough (a group of 11 rural villages) (Telehealth in the tundra). Think about how this would affect you, if you lived in a rural community. Would it change your opinion to just see a nurse practitioner in person and see a doctor via a TV screen? As you continue to read I am going to explain what telehealth is, the benefits of telehealth, and the disadvantages of telehealth. What...
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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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...from the site – 1. Surescripts is a one stop shop to support providers and organizational to connect with other professionals, share and obtain information. 2. E-Prescribing has climbed 42% in the last three years. Now 52% of doctors in the United States are using this technology and the pen and pad prescription method is becoming old news. Doctors are able to electronically submit prescriptions to pharmacies, patients now can arrive at their pharmacy of choice and their medication is available, no more dropping off written scripts, great! 3. Message Stream provides health organizations to securely share patient information such as lab results, medications, and immunization records. 2. What is the difference between Telehealth and Telemedicine? a. Telehealth- is the delivery of health –related services and information via telecommunications technologies. b. Telemedicine – the use of telecommunication and information technologies in order to provide clinical health care at a distance. 3. List various types of Telemedicine and briefly explain 3 of them. a. Telepharmacy- the reason why they come up with this program is because there was a shortage of pharmacists to review prescriptions. They are now sold with cameras so that the pharmacists can approve from any location. b. Telepsychiatry – this type of telepsychiatry is equivalent to face-to-face psychiatry of most patients. You can get individual or group therapy, second opinions and medication reconciliation. c. E-Mail...
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...Telehealth, Telemedicine and Remote patient monitoring Telehealth is the delivery of health-related services and information via telecommunications technologies. Telehealth is the use of electronic information and telecommunications technologies to support long-distance clinical health care, patient and professional health-related education, public health and health administration. Technologies include videoconferencing, the internet, store-and-forward imaging, streaming media, and terrestrial and wireless communications. Telehealth is an expansion of telemedicine, and unlike telemedicine which more narrowly focuses on the curative aspect, it encompasses preventative, promotive and curative aspects. One of the most significant increases in telehealth usage is the home monitoring of conditions by patients. Telemedicine uses Information and Communication Technologies to overcome geographical barriers, and increase access to health care services. This is particularly beneficial for rural and underserved communities in developing countries – groups that traditionally suffer from lack of access to health care. Uses of telehealth Clinical uses | Non-clinical uses | * Transmission of medical images for diagnosis (Store and forward telehealth) | * Distance education including continuing medical education, grand rounds, and patient education | * Groups or individuals exchanging health services or education live via videoconference (Real-time telehealth) | *...
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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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...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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...Telehealth Services Frederick E. McKague University of Phoenix Operations Management OPS/571 Professor Peter Wilms January 14, 2015 Telehealth Services With health care costs rising many consumers, and small employers are struggling to afford their health insurance premiums. Some employers are not able to offer health care coverage at all. For firms with fewer than ten employees, only 50 percent offered coverage to their workers in 2012 ("Rising Health Care Costs," 2014). FEM, Inc. is searching for a more consistent, inexpensive format for monitoring patients, streamlining care and minimizing costs, and Telehealth is the solution. Telehealth is the use of electronic information and telecommunications technologies to support long-distant clinical health care, patient and professional health-related education, public health, and health administration, and it can all be brought to the patient’s location ("Telehealth," 2014). FEM. Inc. will be located in the Skyridge Medical Center in Lone Tree, Colorado. It is best known for being the first acute care hospital in the fastest growing county in the country. It has established itself as a center for 80 specialties and home to a busy birth center which brings about 250 babies into the world each month. The 57-acre campus encompasses a variety of treatment centers, including the Sally Jobe Breast Center and the Sky Ridge Cancer Center. Over the past four years, the hospital’s presence in Lone Tree has drawn...
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...Introduction Telehealth, or telemedicine, can be defined in several different ways. In terms of rehabilitation, the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) defines telehealth as “the use of electronic communications to provide and deliver a host of health-related information and health care services, including, but not limited to, physical therapy-related information and services, over large and small services” (Lee 2012). A simpler definition of telehealth is “the delivery of health-related services and information via telecommunication technologies” (Lee & Billings). Although many people may assume that telemedicine is a very new phenomenon, it dates back to the early 1990s (Brear, 2006). There is a significant proportion of the world’s...
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...The article authored by Hall and McGraw raises the privacy and security concerns associated with telehealth. The authors point out that these risks can affect the level of trust as well as the relationship between the clinicians and the patients. Hall and McGraw identify the inability to control collection and sharing of data can result in the transmission of private details that expose the identity of the patients to unintended persons. They note that hackers have increased and can hack the telehealth systems and result in a security breach and identity theft. According to the article, the current privacy regulations are not reliable to guarantee the patients the security of their shared data. Such security breach has deleterious effects on...
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...Significance Telehealth is vital to those in need of substance abuse treatment. It is estimated that 90 Americans die each day due to an overdose of opioid use. There has been an uptrend of misuse and addictions of opioids which includes prescription pain relievers, heroin, and synthetic opioids. This is considered a national crisis that is having a major impact on public health. The Centers for Disease Control and Preventions has estimated that the economic burden to the United States of opioid misuse is $78.5 billion a year. This estimation includes the cost of healthcare, treatments, and the criminal justice involvement (National Institutes of Health, 2018). This is one of the reasons why it is of great importance to get treatment...
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...So, to avoid these barriers, methods have been created for these people and one of them is telemedicine or telehealth. Telehealth is a process that involves using communication between one place to another to provide therapy and treatment to the patients, this is good for long distance therapy sessions. Telehealth provides more potential benefits as an alternative to in-person treatment. One of them is one potential benefits is lower cost without sacrificing the quality of the treatment and is cost effective within Veterans Affairs settings. After using the telehealth, and seeing all the positive outcomes it has delivered, now it is being used for delivery of behavioral treatments, social skills group treatment, psychological assessments and session evaluations. Telehealth also had an impact in rural areas which was also a positive...
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...eHealth Global Development 1. Introduction Telemedicine as a health care approach was fundamentally born during the 'space race' between the USA and the former USSR. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the USA military and USA government funded the first telemedicine projects. NASA was keen on building a distant monitoring system to manage the health of American astronauts in space (Sullivan, 2001). Today, due to the technological advancements of communication, several applications and internet based software are already developed to provide health care access to those living in remote areas. Before reviewing the literature related to the recent developments of e-health, it is important to clarify the definition of telemedicine. Generally, “Telemedicine involves the use of modern information technology, especially two-way interactive audio/video communications, computers, and telemetry, to deliver health services to remote patients and to facilitate information exchange between primary care physicians and specialists at some distances from each other” (Bashshur, 1997). In the Information Age, telemedicine and computer driven treatment methods are being used in the field of treatment of long term diseases, including cancer, in various ways. eHealth created a new medium that changed the operating environment of the health sector, and its relationship with its constituencies. The introduction of eHealth initiatives had a profound socioeconomic and political...
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...Many would ask what the difference is in Telehealth and Telemedicine, well it's hard to say but i'll try my best. For starters, Telemedicine is medical information passed from one site to another. Telehealth delivers medical, health, and education services. In this essay you will learn what Telehealth, and Telemedicine is, and what the difference will be. Let’s begin. Telemedicine is medicine delivered from a distance. Telemedicine would be helpful in Elder care, Offshore care, and school care. Telemedicine would actually be beneficial to most people who need basic care. Telemedicine would keep cost down, allow patients to be seen and treated faster, and it would improve healthcare outcomes. That is Telemedicine. Telehealth is used to treat...
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...The telehealth care is the inclusion of computerized clinical medical devices for home use with a personal computer for transmitting digital images, graph, picture, photos, audio, and video to a healthcare practitioner or physician for evaluation of health and for diagnosing a disease to prescribe treatment with electronic prescription. Telehealth care is the correlation to primary care for testing, evaluating, and diagnosing health for treatment services. Telehealth for clinical services include medical device that can be apply to performing clinical test by following instruction for operation and connection, 'thinklabs' is site for converting medical equipment use for testing in primary care to digital devices for computer use. The computerized...
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