Patient and environment assessment
From Capsil Wiki
Overview
All patients who are targeted to receive home telehealth (even the likeliest candidates who have chronic diseases and are willing to change behaviors with telehealth help) must be assessed more closely than they would be for usual home care services. Patients can't simply agree to use telehealth to meet the challenges of changing their life-long routines. They must be assessed thoroughly for physical and cognitive capabilities for perfroming these tasks correctly and effectively. It is necessary to assess patients' cognitive skills indicating their abilities to remember or perform certain tasks without onsite coaching by a nurse or other caregiver; and the patients' physical capabilities such as their degrees or limitations of hearing and seeing must be assessed as well if telehealth contact is to be successful.
An example asessment form is given by The Telemedicine Information Exchange "Patient Assessment as Appropriate for for Assignment to Home Telehealth" [1].
As was seen in the CAPSIL on Mobile and Home Monitoring systems getting the home "right" is an important consideration in deciding whether home telehealth will work well. The home has to be assessed by qualified personnel as being appropriate for telehealth (or made to be appropriate and safe). Personnel doing the assessments will be looking at measuring distances between telehealth workstation, telephone, and usual patient location (easy chair in living room, chair at kitchen table, and so on), and usual routine footpaths in the room or rooms typically used by the patient. In assessing and then preparing the home for telehealth, it is crucial that no hazards be introduced as a result of setting up a telehealth system, and any changes that are introduced to a patient's usual setting or routine path are made safe. This safeguarding activity may call for nurses duct-taping wires to the floor, using brightly colored tape on rearranged furniture, and otherwise taking all steps to avoid affecting patients' safety by introducing home telehealth i.e "tele-proofing" a room to ensure safety.
Therefore it should be noted Not all candidates will be suitable for telehealth solutions! and proper assessment should be performed beforehand.
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