Non-Medical Aspects
For example, consider a 75-year-old lady, who has coronary artery disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and diabetes. She lives with her husband, has limited mobility, and struggles to access healthy food. Under a traditional-care model, she may be admitted to the hospital with a heart attack and then discharged to a skilled nursing facility because of concerns about her ability to stay safe and engaged at home. Under a Care at Home model, she might be evaluated by a physician and sent home, where she could have an assigned nurse and care manager, remote patient monitoring, daily telehealth visits with a physician coupled with in-person care from a nurse, and meals delivered to her home by a community-based organization. From the above example, there are 4 factors to consider:
1) Easily accessible care: more patients with post-acute and long-term care need easier accessible care at-home services. New technologies are making care at home possible for more people. Telehealth platforms, for example, allow providers to give consultations, monitor patient progress remotely and support if there is an issue.
2) Information: the care should be patient centered and is also family centered, thus includes the patients’ family members.
3) Administration and communication: it requires succinct documentation of plans of care with rationale to facilitate that all care for the patient is directed towards the same patient goals. Furthermore, it is collaborative work involving coordinated communication with other healthcare providers to meet the patients’ goal. In essence then, how healthcare providers deliver patient care is dependent on finding out what patients want.
4) Ancillary services: other services such as medicine, food, transportation, etc. should be accessible both to patients and to attending families.
Medical Aspects
The medical aspects of patient care at home are much better understood by most healthcare providers. This is dependent on the quality of medical and technical expertise, and the equipment and quality assurance systems in practice. The following factors contribute to the improvement of patient care at home:
1) Trained personnel: it’s important to create awareness, provide training and education to providers on the technologies available for care at home, as well as their uses and benefits.
2) Equipment: all the necessary equipment must be in place. It is vital to the performance and contributes significantly to better results. Establish broadband networks to support reliable data transmissions and Internet of Things capabilities. As in a rural community report, the adoption of virtual care in rural areas continues to lag behind urban areas, in part because rural residents are eight times more likely to lack access to broadband at home. This may exclude them from receiving home health services that rely on telehealth or remote monitoring.
