Telehealth has the potential to deliver important benefits to the growing number of patients who suffer from long-term conditions. It reduces the likelihood of their being admitted to hospital, provides them with more-integrated and higher-quality care, and enables them to take more responsibility for managing their own care.
Listen to our telehealth expert's view on the whole system demonstrator (WSD) report.
PA is working with health organisations, helping them take action, on three fronts, to realise the full benefits of telehealth: design and implement systems that integrate care; educate and enthuse patients and staff about telehealth approaches and ensure staff have the skills to deliver services in new ways and make best use of the technology available.
Designing more integrated care pathways
Healthcare systems are very fragmented and patients are often confused about how to access services. Implementing telehealth gives healthcare commissioners and providers an opportunity to design and implement more-integrated care pathways across specialist secondary care and community boundaries. This integration can improve the quality of information available to support case management, resulting in an improved patient experience.
Communicating the benefits of telehealth
Realising the benefits of telehealth requires patients, carers and clinical teams to behave in new ways. So, healthcare organisations need to implement comprehensive communications and education and training programmes for patients and clinicians alike. These should not only promote the telehealth solution, but also train people to use the equipment, help them understand what their readings mean and engage them in managing their own care.
Training staff to deliver services in new ways
Realising the benefits highlighted in the WSD report will only be achieved where patients, carers and clinicians change their existing behaviours and challenge the way services are currently delivered. Community teams will, for example, need to work with an increased awareness of how other parts of the system can be involved in improved care planning.
PA has extensive experience of supporting the implementation of clinical pathways to deliver out-of-hospital care and the design of medical education and training programmes, workforce changes and patient experience programmes. We have recently supported Bexley and Integrated Primary Care Commissioning Group to support the development of telehealth business cases and the design of implementation models and frameworks.
To find out more about how PA can help your organisation use telehealth to improve services to patients, please contact us now.