Telehealth: How to Ensure Patient Satisfaction
​​During the pandemic, have you had a doctor’s appointment without actually having to go to their office? Telehealth has been on the rise with the pandemic, but what is telehealth? The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) refers to telehealth as "electronic and telecommunications technologies and services used to provide care and services at a distance” (Gold, 2021). According to Global Market Insights, the report predicts the telemedicine industry to value roughly $176 billion by 2026 (Harpaz, 2020).
COVID-19 has been a significant contributor to the increase in telehealth services. Throughout the pandemic, telehealth has become very important, as it can expand access to care, decrease the risk of infection for both the patients and the workers, and help to preserve PPE (Koonin et al., 2020). Many are afraid to visit the doctor’s office in person because of the fears of COVID-19. With home care providers, many were facing patients denying their service at the start of the pandemic. Patients did not want home care workers entering their homes, and many home care workers did not want to visit their patients home because of their fears of the virus.
An article published in JAMA Network Open with roughly 6.8 million people during March and April in 2020 illustrates the “use of in-person medical services dropped by 23% in March and 52% in April, and that telemedicine services grew by more than 1000% in March and more than 4000% in April” (Murez, 2021).
The CDC indicates that “telehealth visits took off during the last week of March 2020, jumping 154% compared to the same week in 2019” (Wolfson, 2021). To put into perspective, telehealth visits in April of 2020 was 78x higher than telehealth visits in February of that year (Bestsennyy et al., 2021).
In Ontario, "between March and July of 2020, office visits in Ontario declined by nearly 80 per cent and virtual care increased 56-fold, comprising 71 per cent of primary care physician visits, a study by the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) showed” (Aziz, 2021).
Impact of telehealth in home healthcare
Telehealth helps home care providers with the ability to monitor their patients remotely. Remote patient monitoring allows patients to receive the medical attention they need in their own homes, yet, home care workers don’t have to physically be there, which is critical for the home care industry as they are dealing with a shortage of workers (Murphy, 2018).
Home care workers may visit their patient's homes several times a week, but they are not there with them 24/7. Remote patient monitoring allows the worker to measure and monitor diabetes, congestive heart failure or hypertension (Silverstein, 2021). Patients connected to a device allow home healthcare agencies to monitor their patient’s vitals and set alarms and notifications when there is a change. When there are certain detection alerts, home care workers can call/video call to see if their patients are okay. It can help reduce the number of times a worker needs to visit their patients home, which is helpful considering the lack of staffing in the industry.
Instead of a home care worker visiting a senior’s home, they can conduct a virtual session to teach seniors to improve their balance, strength, and how to prevent falls. Telehealth not only benefits home care providers but the healthcare system as well. Telehealth can provide care and solutions to immediate concerns that an individual may have, which can help prevent trips to the emergency department. Additionally, "it can also decrease hospitalizations and length of stay in hospitals" (Khalid, 2020).
In a study conducted by AccentCare and Brittian-Kalish Group with roughly 1,400 patients, with 314 participants part of the hybrid group (both virtual and in-person visits). It illustrated that those receiving care in the hybrid method had lower hospitalizations (Holly, 2021).
The risks of telehealth in home healthcare
There are risks to telehealth when it comes to home healthcare. Telehealth means that you are seeing a physician through a computer screen and not in person, which means that telehealth patients lack a physical exam. Telehealth does not require the patient to visit the doctor’s office, which can negatively affect an accurate diagnosis because there is no "in-person evaluation" (Mayo Clinic Staff, 2020). Additionally, there may be privacy issues and the inability to read the nonverbal cues of the patient when offering care through telehealth services.
Training in telehealth is crucial and can “make or break the patient experience” (Wantuck, 2020). When there is a lack of training in telehealth, human empathy can decrease. It is important to gather consistent feedback from healthcare workers providing telehealth to make sure that they are “implementing best practices and are up to date with the expanding technology and techniques of digital medicine” (Wantuck, 2020).
Feedback from patients provides home care providers insights on what needs improvement and what types of training needs to be in place. Surveys are a great way to deploy these questions to their employees. Pulse surveys are short, frequent surveys that can be tailored to specific topics to assess their change over time.
Do you find the nursing staff is fair in their assessments?
The nursing staff is good at listening to my needs.
I have the knowledge and resources to respond to patients' needs.
In the second example, it's clear that staff need to be equipped with knowledge and tools to respond to patients' needs.
Retainify offers a 360 development tool that can help businesses understand the strengths and weaknesses of their employees. With the help of our 360 development tool, companies can identify what training needs to take place and what to do to improve these gaps.
Retainify is an employee engagement software that offers a unified solution that allows you to track employee sentiment and measure engagement in real-time. Proactively identify issues that are preventing them from being their best at work. Improve business outcomes by improving the employee experience, and enhance company culture one feedback at a time. Turn Feedback into Action.