AHRQ Report Details Improvements and Challenges for Telehealth Grant Projects
The Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ) recently released a report on telehealth grant projects that reveals the improvements and challenges that telehealth grantees experience.
Although trends among AHRQ-funded projects point toward evidence of improvements in patient outcomes and experiences with the healthcare system, the projects experienced some technical challenges with telehealth equipment, including unreliable home monitoring devices and video resolution that was not up to par.
Some of the complaints were enough to cause patients in the study to stop using the equipment.
Study participants said round-the-clock technical support is needed to ensure patient safety. Because these particular projects were smaller organizations, they relied primarily on vendors for technical support, but found those vendors could not provide the same level of support as internal IT departments at larger organizations.
AHRQ researchers also found that guidelines for reimbursement are necessary for sustainability. The project measured component healthcare costs to demonstrate to regional payers the cost savings of telehealth over traditional in-person care. Specific areas being investigated by the project include the impact of early diagnosis on the initiation of treatment, the ability to manage chronic illness via telehealth versus emergency care, and the effects of continuity of care offered by telehealth applications.
Other findings of the study show that telehealth can support the provision of team-based care and that integration with an electronic health records system is vital to continuity of care across clinical settings.
More information can be found at http://healthit.ahrq.gov.
Although trends among AHRQ-funded projects point toward evidence of improvements in patient outcomes and experiences with the healthcare system, the projects experienced some technical challenges with telehealth equipment, including unreliable home monitoring devices and video resolution that was not up to par.
Some of the complaints were enough to cause patients in the study to stop using the equipment.
Study participants said round-the-clock technical support is needed to ensure patient safety. Because these particular projects were smaller organizations, they relied primarily on vendors for technical support, but found those vendors could not provide the same level of support as internal IT departments at larger organizations.
AHRQ researchers also found that guidelines for reimbursement are necessary for sustainability. The project measured component healthcare costs to demonstrate to regional payers the cost savings of telehealth over traditional in-person care. Specific areas being investigated by the project include the impact of early diagnosis on the initiation of treatment, the ability to manage chronic illness via telehealth versus emergency care, and the effects of continuity of care offered by telehealth applications.
Other findings of the study show that telehealth can support the provision of team-based care and that integration with an electronic health records system is vital to continuity of care across clinical settings.
More information can be found at http://healthit.ahrq.gov.
posted by ATSP Staff at 1:43 PM
