NR 512 Week 7 Narrated Power Point Presentation

NR 512 Week 7 Narrated Power Point Presentation

NR 512 Week 7 Narrated Power Point Presentation

NR 512 Week 7 Narrated Power Point Presentation

Telemedicine and Telehealth in Health Care

October 20, 2019

Fundamentals of Nursing Informatics

Introduction

Telemedicine means “distance healing“.

Derived from a Greek word “Tele” meaning “distance” and a Latin word “mederi” meaning “to heal“.

Telemedicine is the remote delivery of healthcare services and clinical information using telecommunications technology. 

This includes a wide array of clinical services using internet, wireless, satellite and telephone media.

The American Telemedicine Association is the most widely-recognized industry group for telemedicine. This is the official definition of the Telemedicine.

One of the earliest known uses was in 1905, with the transmission of electrocardiograms. We in healthcare first widely felt the impact in the 1990s with the growth of teleradiology, which dramatically impacted the radiology specialty. 

NR 512 Week 7 Narrated Power Point Presentation

The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services defines telehealth as the use of electronic information and telecommunications technologies to support and promote long-distance clinical health care, patient and professional health-related education, public health and health administration.

Technologies include videoconferencing, the internet, store-and-forward imaging, streaming media, and terrestrial and wireless communications.

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Why I Chose This Topic?

Physicians having difficulty getting appropriate call coverage

Healthcare cost is increasing

Due to aging population and nursing shortage, patients are not getting quality services

Need for ease of healthcare access is high

Technology reduces errors and provides stable communication mode between patients and health  professionals

NR 512 Week 7 Narrated Power Point Presentation

Telehealth helps address all these problems by making healthcare delivery an anytime, anywhere option for patients. This is no surprise considering one of the main drivers of telemedicine development was offering better healthcare access to U.S. populations in living in rural or remote areas.

How does Telemedicine improve patient outcomes? Well, just imagine if you started offering quick telemedicine follow-up visits to patients who were discharged from the hospital. Or to chronic care patients who struggle to manage all their medications or get to all their appointments. The more convenient the follow-up process is for patients, the less likely they are to miss an important appointment or have an early warning sign turn into an urgent, avoidable hospital visit.

Unnecessary ER visits and avoidable hospital readmissions are one of the key reasons the U.S. has the highest healthcare spending per capita of any country. And beyond the costs and damage this can do to patients, hospitals incur penalties for high readmissions rates.

More convenient care means happier patients. Period. Plus, when patients feel like they can stay connected with you and better manage their health, they’ll be more engaged in their care.

More convenient virtual care can often translate into less no-shows and late appointments for nurses. That means a more efficient practice that can handle a larger patient load, and less inefficient or unused billable time.

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NR 512 Week 7 Narrated Power Point Presentation

Impact on Practice

Diagnose and treat diseases faster

Let patients undergo rehab at home

Improve rural health care around the world

Managing time and appointment scheduling

Link patients and general practitioners to specialists

Enhanced interprofessional collaboration

Better technical knowledge leads to reduced error rates

Employees can avoid absences from work when telehealth services are available on site or when employees can remotely participate in consultations about family members.

Reducing extended travel to obtain necessary care reduces the related carbon footprint.

Home monitoring of chronic diseases is reducing hospital visits by as much as 50% by keeping patients stable through daily monitoring.

The national average for re-admission to hospitals within 30 days following a heart failure episode is 20%. Telehealth monitoring programs have reduced that level to less than 4%.

Timely provision of treatments that effectively reverse the consequences of a stroke have risen from 15% to 85% due to the availability of telestroke programs.

NR 512 Week 7 Narrated Power Point Presentation

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Pros and Cons

Pros

It increases access to healthcare

It improves health outcomes

It reduces healthcare costs

It supports clinical education programs

It improves support for patients and families

It improves organizational productivity

NR 512 Week 7 Narrated Power Point Presentation

Cons

Risk to patient privacy and confidentiality

Technology advances and as a result healthcare professionals needs to get periodic training

Increased trust issue

Reduced patient-nurse and patient-physician relationship

One of the top benefits of telemedicine is anytime, anywhere access. If you want to consult a patient by video while traveling, or working from your home office, you can do that with just a smartphone or laptop. 

Adding a telemedicine service to your practice can give you the flexibility to offer same-day appointments, as time opens up in your schedule. While a patient may not want to wait around at your office all day for a potential opening, they’d be happy to go about their day until they receive a simple notification that you’re ready to see them online.

Many providers don’t get compensated for after-hours consultations with patients. Switching to an afterhours telemedicine model could make a big difference to nursing practice.

NR 512 Week 7 Narrated Power Point Presentation

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Application and Relevance of Informatics to Topic

Nurse informatics and telemedicine assist in setting up equipment in patients’ homes, use and troubleshoot them

Nurse informatics can educate health care workers in the proper use of Telehealth and monitoring equipment

Nurse informatics plays a critical role in implementing telehealth initiatives

Nursing informatics and telemedicine both require technical knowledge

In telemedicine and home health, nurses rely on technology and telehealth to keep tabs on their patients’ conditions. For example, they often use tools that assess and record vital signs, such as heart rate, blood pressure and blood glucose. Nurse informaticists assist in setting up this equipment in patients’ homes, teaching them how to use it and troubleshooting in the event of technical difficulties.

In many cases, nurses know very little about the tools and methods available in telemedicine. They can’t simply go to a patient’s bedside if they want to evaluate their status. Instead, they must rely on the technology that exist to evaluate patient’s status remotely as well as interpret biometric data. Nurse informaticists can teach telemedicine nurses how to use these systems and adjust to this approach to patient care.

Nurse informaticists play a critical role in implementing telehealth initiatives, by designing and maintaining the systems required for treating patients remotely

NR 512 Week 7 Narrated Power Point Presentation

Rather than provide hands-on, direct patient care, nurse informaticists work behind-the-scenes to improve the overall health care experience and make things easier for the nurses at the bedside. For example, they might work with the hospital’s IT department and the nursing staff to streamline the electronic health records system.

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NI Skills Utilized

Technical/computer skills

Critical thinking, analysis, and problem-solving

Pain management, and wound care through data analysis

Leadership and collaboration skills to educate co-workers

Promoting a safe environment through ethical practice

Patient data protection

Communication skills to educating patients and families

While an Informatics Nurse may not be the technical expert of a project team, by the nature of the work she or he is expected to have some kind of technical aptitude.  Informatics nurses should be able to perform their own analysis and offer suggestions to resolve issues, and this is more effective when they have a certain store of training, experience, and understanding of how certain technical functionality works.

NR 512 Week 7 Narrated Power Point Presentation

The unique value that a clinician brings to any Nursing Informatics role is his or her experience in patient care.  Because of that, a clinician is expected to be able to think through problems or issues and analyze them based on this wealth of knowledge and experience.  They are expected not only to understand and accept technical functionality, but to analyze and even sometimes question the validity of the functionality

Through conferencing capabilities, it is possible to connect more than one health care professional with the patient for determining diagnosis and treatment. This can be particularly important in rural areas, or for certain specialties of care, where the specialist may be located at a far distance from the patient that needs consultation.

Essay NR 537 Week 3 Test Construction

Nurses carefully observe their surroundings throughout their shifts and identify potential hazards so they can be dealt with quickly. They carefully sterilize equipment and follow safety guidelines at all times to minimize the risk of spreading contagions.

A nurse is never done learning in her career, as technology and medical knowledge are constantly evolving. It’s important for nurses to stay up-to-date in order to continue providing patients with the best possible care. 

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Future Recommendations

Personalization of the delivery of health care

Matching certain patients with corresponding technologies

Efficient use of data; including a secure interface between the patient and provider

More opportunities for patient education

New communities of clinical practice

Care models and business models adapted for sustainability of telemedicine initiatives

Increased scientific research converged with evidence-based practice

Forward-thinking research approaches within telemedicine

NR 512 Week 7 Narrated Power Point Presentation

Conclusion

Telemedicine and telehealth integrated with nursing informatics increases technical knowledge in nurses. The combination helps in reducing healthcare cost, complexities, errors, difficulty in healthcare access and decision-making dilemmas. It helps in increasing quality of care, patient satisfaction, faster implementation of interventions and recovery rate. 

References

Bose, E., & Radhakrishnan, K. (2018). Using Unsupervised Machine Learning to Identify Subgroups Among Home Health Patients With Heart Failure Using Telehealth. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 36(5), 242-248. doi: 10.1097/cin.0000000000000423

Healthit.gov. (2019). Why is telehealth important for rural providers? | HealthIT.gov. Retrieved 19 October 2019, from https://www.healthit.gov/faq/why-telehealth-important-rural-providers

Kalb, T. (2015). Increasing Quality Through Telemedicine in the Intensive Care Unit. Critical Care Clinics, 31(2), 257-273. doi: 10.1016/j.ccc.2014.12.005

Rincon, T., Manos, E., & Pierce, J. (2017). Telehealth Intensive Care Unit Nurse Surveillance of Sepsis. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 35(9), 459-464. doi: 10.1097/cin.0000000000000355

Rutledge, C., Haney, T., Bordelon, M., Renaud, M., & Fowler, C. (2014). Telehealth: Preparing Advanced Practice Nurses to Address Healthcare Needs in Rural and Underserved Populations. International Journal Of Nursing Education Scholarship, 11(1). doi: 10.1515/ijnes-2013-0061

Sanghavi, D., Guru, P., & Moreno Franco, P. (2019). Quality Improvement and Telemedicine Intensive Care Unit. Critical Care Clinics, 35(3), 451-462. doi: 10.1016/j.ccc.2019.02.003

Telemedicine.arizona.edu. (2019). 8 Reasons to Adopt Telehealth | telemedicine.arizona.edu. Retrieved 19 October 2019, from https://telemedicine.arizona.edu/blog/8-reasons-adopt-telehealth

NR 512 Week 7 Narrated Power Point Presentation