Rural Outreach in Home Telehealth: Assessing Challenges and Reviewing Successes

Abstract

Most home health agencies that adopt home telehealth tend to be located in urban or metropolitan areas. This paper discusses a 3-year pilot of home telehealth in four rural areas. Several challenges related to the rural nature of the home health agencies were recognized. These challenges are discussed with recommendations for assessing rural home health agencies for home telehealth. Our findings suggest ways to improve the implementation of home telehealth for rural home health agencies. In addition to the challenges, successes were realized as well. Approximately 145 travel hours and 7500 miles of nurse travel were avoided through the use of home telehealth during the program. Patient examples show improvements in their medical conditions, which the nursing staff thought would not have been accomplished without the more frequent monitoring that home telehealth allowed the agencies to provide.

Brief Report: Use of Interactive Television in Identifying Autism in Young Children: Methodology and Preliminary Data

“…One possible solution is using video conferencing (VC) to aid in assessment and diagnostic procedures, which provides a means to reach families in rural and underserved areas. Several studies (Marcin et al 2004; Farmer & Muhlenbruck 2001) demonstrated that the use of VC technology improved access to pediatric subspecialty care for children living in rural areas and suggest telemedicine (i.e., use of VC in health care) may be a viable means to provide services for children with ASD living in rural and underserved areas (Marcin et al 2004; Nesbitt et al 2006). Recent research investigates the use of VC in providing services to children with ASD, including ABA, parent training, and behavior assessment and treatment (Heitzman-Powel et al 2013; Barretto et al 2006), as well as inter-rater agreement on autism measures over VC (Reese et al 2012).…”

A Review of Health Information Technology Implementation Success Factors: Importance of Regulation and Finance

“…In short, the analysis of earlier studies suggests the research in HIT implementation has tended to fall into one of two groups: one with case-study method provides lessons learned or recommendations grounded on data collected or/and experience gained from individual case studies, and the other attempts to create generic models. Such as past experience in technology, change and innovation, innovating mindfully, staff educators, models of shared local training and support, stressing the benefits, and providing evidences [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14] , [15], [ End-user participation End-user participation and involvement in the development of the system can assist to meet the need of end-users & organization [6], [8], [15], [16],…”

“…[6], [11], [15], [16], [20], [24], [25], [26], [27], [ Infrastructure Quality Such as connectivity, interoperability, standardization, integration, privacy and security [7], [9], [14], [16], [28] 5 13.89%…”

“…Such as finances and staff [7], [14], [25], [30] 4 11.11% Commitment and support from executives leaders [8], [11], [25], [29] 4 11.11%…”

Home telecare technologies for the elderly

“…8 Some staff members will be comfortable about using computer-based applications and will not be easily deterred when new technical problems arise, but others may not. 9 In any case, all users will require training for using each system, taking into account the level of their expertise.…”