Strategies for Improving Telehealth Paper Example

Introduction

There are many strategies currently existing in the literature that can be used in improving telehealth systems. One of these strategies involves raising awareness of telehealth (Adriano Moran & Roudsari, 2015; Taylor, Coates, Wessels, Mountain, & Hawley, 2015). One of the ways of raising awareness about telehealth systems and ideas include conducting training sessions for nurses who are currently reluctant to adopt telehealth in their practice.

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Additionally, increased awareness of telehealth can be achieved by establishing close working relationship new clinical commissioning groups and by ensuring that other clinical practitioners are also conversant with telehealth systems. By training all the health professionals in the use of telehealth systems, it is highly likely that there will be increased access to health (Taylor et al., 2015). Improved access to healthcare is achieved because patients in remote areas can easily obtain clinical services (California Telehealth Resource Centre, n.d.). Also, through telehealth systems, hospitals located in remote areas are capable of providing emergency and intensive care services.

However, Taylor et al. (2015) noted that currently exist mixed opinions regarding the promotion of the telehealth system because of the difficulties related to securing financial investment for subsequent years at that time. Other concerns that can potentially affect the promotion of the telehealth system included limited capacity and the need for improvement of the service at the time of the study.

Another approach towards the improvement telehealth systems is securing financial investment for telehealth (Taylor et al., 2015). This is because one of the current challenges faced in the telehealth system is short-term funding, a factor that has been identified as the primary barrier to the implementation of telehealth systems. Taylor et al. (2015) noted that future financial investment in telehealth could be secured through the establishment of relationships with local decision-makers and technology providers. Influencing decision-makers to support telehealth systems can be achieved through telehealth symptoms tasked with engaging local decision-makers and convincing them of the beneficial impact of telehealth.

The Justification for the Strategies and How They Would Improve Telehealth Systems

Increased awareness of telehealth systems across all healthcare professionals is an essential strategy in telehealth. This is when all the healthcare staff are well-versed with the use of this technology, they will be in a better position of providing treatment to the affected patients. A recent study conducted by Taylor et al. (2015) to examine the factors influencing frontline staff acceptance and adoption of telehealth showed that nurses attitudes ranged from enthusiasm to resistance. The researchers further established that the presence of a telehealth system with high reliability and flexibility are crucial in helping the healthcare professionals in overcoming the barriers to acceptance of telehealth systems. Taylor et al. (2015) also noted that implementing telehealth through partnership and staff training improves adoption among healthcare workers.

Increased funding towards the telehealth system will be needed to ensure that there is an increased extension of telehealth services across a particular country. For instance, according to the American Hospital Association (2018), increased funding for telehealth programs is aimed at ensuring that that healthcare professionals get the connectivity they deserve to serve patients throughout the country, e.g. in rural areas better. More funding is also needed to ensure that the telehealth system that all level of the healthcare systems is equipped with the latest telehealth system technologies (American Hospital Association, 2018).

One of the latest trends in the telehealth system that more funding can enable health organizations to acquire is patient data collection and data analytics. This system allows for automatic capture of patient data during a telemedicine session. The automated capture of such information is achieved through the use of mobile applications and sensors. According to Forbes (2018), the use of the data collected and the availability of modern tools has led to increased patient self-monitoring. This is also projected to further increase in the future given the technological advancement of telemedicine tools. Some of the telehealth tools track the patient electrocardiogram's and send the results to physicians thus providing a vital tool for medical professionals to monitor cardiovascular activity. Moreover, Big Data analytics is useful in data analysis, especially analyzing patients' data leading to improvement of telehealth treatments (Forbes, 2018).

Briefly Describe any Potential Difficulty in Adopting the Strategy or Tool

One of the potential difficulties in increasing healthcare professional awareness and adoption of telehealth systems is lack of funding for training (Jacelon, Xie, & Radhakrishnan, 2016; Raza et al., 2018). Lack of funding may be attributed to the fact that governments may have difficulties meeting its fiscal budget. Because of this, some governments may not have adequate financial resources to implement what might be a costly venture. Also, even in cases where a particular government may meet the obligation of implementing telehealth systems, lack of funds for training of all healthcare professionals may impede proper use of the systems. Consequently, it is highly likely that such telehealth systems may not meet its goals of ensuring timely and accurate surveillance of diseases.

References

Adriano Moran, J. J., & Roudsari, A. (2015). The importance of telehealth for directors and other decision makers. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, 208(1), 7-11.

American Heart Association (2018). Breaking: FCC commissioners approve funding increase for rural telehealth program. Retrieved from https://www.aha.org/news/headline/2018-06-19-breaking-fcc-commissioners-approve-funding-increase-rural-telehealth

California Telehealth Resource Center (n.d). Why are telemedicine and telehealth so important in our healthcare system? Retrieved from http://www.caltrc.org/telehealth/why-are-telemedicine-and-telehealth-so-important-in-our-healthcare-system/

Forbes (2018). What are the latest trends in telemedicine in 2018? Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2018/07/31/what-are-the-latest-trends-in-telemedicine-in-2018/

Jacelon, C. S., Xie, B., & Radhakrishnan, K. (2016). Unsustainable home telehealth: a texas qualitative study. The Gerontologist, 56(5), 830-840. https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnv050

Raza, M., Hoa Le, M., Aslam, N., Hieu Le, C., Tam Le, N., & Ly Le, T. (2018). Telehealth technology: potentials, challenges and research directions for developing countries. In T. Vo Van, T. A. Nguyen Le, & T. Nguyen Duc (Eds.), 6th International Conference on the Development of Biomedical Engineering in Vietnam (BME6) (pp. 523-528). Springer Singapore.

Taylor, J., Coates, E., Brewster, L., Mountain, G., Wessels, B., & Hawley, M. S. (2015). Examining the use of telehealth in community nursing: identifying the factors affecting frontline staff acceptance and telehealth adoption. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 71(2), 326-337. https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.12480

Taylor, J., Coates, E., Wessels, B., Mountain, G., & Hawley, M. S. (2015). Implementing solutions to improve and expand telehealth adoption: participatory action research in four community healthcare settings. BMC Health Services Research, 15 (529), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-015-1195-3