LHCR / Home Health Newsletters

September / October 2006 - Telehealth – Physician Barriers & Buy-in

Home health agencies may experience some barriers in the initial stages of implementing a home telehealth program.  Some tips on physician barriers and buy-in are as follows:

Barriers: 

• Physician knowledge regarding effective use of home telehealth is limited.

• Physicians do not understand reimbursement for home telehealth.

Strategies to Improve Buy-in: 

• Invite office staff/nurse to agency to see how your telemonitoring system works and can benefit the physician.  MD’s staff/nurse can influence physician’s buy-in and a champion physician can influence other physicians’ buy-in.

• Demonstrate to physicians that telemonitoring data is real-time and can be compiled for physician in graphs, if desired. 

•  Aggregate your data to show the effects of your telemonitoring program and share with your physicians (they are interested in research).

• Provide home telehealth articles from journals to physician office.

Potential Physician Response: 

• Patient referrals related to home telehealth program

• Physician approved agency protocols for early interventions thus reducing avoidable hospitalizations

How to Incorporate Into Your Plan of Action:
Acute care hospitalization plans of action should reflect the type of telehealth (phone monitoring or telemonitoring) that is being used as a clinical intervention.  In addition to the type of telehealth being used, you want to identify the patient population receiving telehealth.  Sample ACH best practices that would capture this information include:
 

• At SOC/ROC, patients identified as high risk for hospitalization using the agency Hospitalization Risk Assessment will receive scheduled phone monitoring encounters as part of their plan of care.

• Phone monitoring will be scheduled 3 x /week x 2 weeks then 2 x/week for patients with a primary or secondary diagnosis of CHF.

• Patients that score greater than _____ on the agency Hospitalization Risk Assessment at SOC/ROC will be provided a telemonitoring unit.

• Patients recently discharged from the hospital with an exacerbation of CHF, COPD or Diabetes will be evaluated for telemonitoring.

 Thanks to Misty Kevech from Quality Insights of PA.

Jane Artz Bergeron RN, BSHA
LHCR Home Health Team Leader