By Sandra Ray, Staff Writer
When many rural communities in the 1990s began to look for
options to provide medical care to their area without a
physician in residence, telehealth options surfaced and
flourished. Patients could visit an office once or twice a week,
have a traveling nurse take vitals, and then speak to a
physician through a video relay service. For those areas who
before had no health care, the programs provided much-needed
access to individuals who otherwise may have gone without.
Now telehealth options are expanding into the home and are seen
by some as a way to keep the disabled and elderly at home longer
and out of nursing home care. The costs of long-term care have
increased dramatically in recent years and individuals are no
longer willing to accept that nursing home care is the only way
to age with the basics of medical attention.
The Center for Telehealth and E-Health Law notes, “the use of
home care technology now makes it possible for advanced data
collection systems working in conjunction with remote video and
non-video communication devices to simplify home care practices
for both patients and home care personnel.” In other words,
remote monitoring is now one of the ways that individuals are
choosing to age in place and still keep close tabs with the
doctor’s office and the changing landscape of healthcare today.
Another benefit of remote monitoring is the reduced amount of
hospitalizations or hospital stays that chronically ill patients
endure. An independent study of monitored vs. non-monitored
patients formed by Strategic Healthcare Programs revealed that
patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
improved in activities of daily living and were more stable.
Those patients who received home monitoring reported
improvements rates of 80.3 percent vs. 71.8 percent of those who
were not monitored. Another study in the Journal of the American
College of Cardiology demonstrated reduced hospitalization rates
for monitored patients from 3.2 hospitalizations per person to
0.8 hospitalizations per person.
For those who are unfamiliar with telehealth in the home, there
are several basic ways services can be provided that can aid the
patient and the caregiver with everyday medical decisions. Some
physicians may use the term remote monitoring in lieu of
telehealth. Basically, the same services can be provided with
similar results.
No One-Size-Fits-All Systems
There are many different types of systems on the market that
seek to gather data about a person in the home and communicate
that information to a caregiver or physician. These systems
differ from a personal emergency response system (PERS) in that
they allow patients to give a well-rounded view of the
activities in the home environment. From a physician’s
stand-point, having first-hand information of what activities
are going on at home allows them to make better diagnoses than
simply relying on self-report “snap shots” in the office.
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