Title

Barriers to Cost and Clinical Efficiency With Telehomecare and Proposed Solutions

Document Type

Conference Paper

Date of this Version

1-30-2012

Publication Source

eTELEMED 2012, The Fourth International Conference on eHealth, Telemedicine, and Social Medicine

Start Page

164

Last Page

168

Abstract

Efficiency gains are often promoted as a benefit of using technology. In home care, telehealth technology provides an opportunity for cost and clinical efficiency gains through the efficient use of monitoring technology in conjunction with in-person contact. However, most telehomecare programs use the technology in addition to the in-person visits. This study was a randomised controlled field study comparing the effects of a telehomecare intervention that substitutes for some standard home care services for patients following hospital discharge for heart failure with the effects of standard home care services alone. Contrary to study goals, findings revealed the patients in the technology group received more visits and a longer period in home care than the usual care group. As requested in the conference call for papers, the purpose of this paper is to describe the issues and barriers the team faced in implementing a substitution protocol and to propose solutions that may promote cost and clinical efficiency in future work.

Copyright/Permission Statement

© 2012 Bowles et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Comments

The eTELEMED, Fourth International Conference on eHealth, Telemedicine, and Social Medicine was held in Valencia, Spain from January 30, 2012 to February 4, 2012.

Keywords

telehealth, telehomecare, visit pattern, efficiency

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Date Posted: 01 June 2016