Does Home Telehealth Work For Every Patient?

Does Home Telehealth Work For Every Patient?

More and more, experimenters on this motionless very fresh edge of home telehealth have begun to terminate that, from a business standpoint, telehealth works most excellent with those patients who require the majority recurrent contact. For instance, those patients living with diabetes who regularly eat too many foods high in carbohydrates, or not remember to assess their blood sugars on a regular basis every day need more communication, teaching, and coaching to stay relatively well. Linda C. Pearce, RN, CDE, notes the vital importance of ongoing education delivered conventionally or via telehealth—whatever it takes to get people, living with diabetes, on the road to self management. She notes, remarkably, that: “A person newly diagnosed with diabetes must learn ~150 different tasks in order to reach disease self management. 5

To a certain extent than brand some difficult and costly patients “noncompliant,” clearly we need to be familiar with that they may from time to time be patients who just don’t keep in mind what to do or eat, and as a result are frequently hospitalized and cost more. The educational need for telehealth is clear in cases like these. As Pearce notes about usual education for newly diagnosed persons living with diabetes:

Much desirable skill in self management, in her words, “Cannot be achieved during a brief hospital stay, most particularly during a brief educational session just prior to discharge while family or friends are waiting to take the patient home.”

Stephen Clements, MD, an endocrinologist who works with home telehealth and diabetes programs likewise suggests the advantage and worth of increased get in touch with for these patients.

He says: “I believe the best way to have an impact on the patient is by giving constant personal feedback to the patient on how well he or she is doing.” 6

Home telehealthcare services that provide continuing education and informal and frequent reminders and coaching may affect or “work” for other long-term chronic care populations who need to learn lifetime changes, those followed more than 60 days after the typical home episode. A focus on the neediest patients groups that often respond very well to telehealth will be discussed in later segments of this chapter (under the subheading Which Patient Groups Should be Targeted for Home Telehealth? Today’s Elderly Patients Living with Chronic Diseases).

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