IMPLEMENTING VIDEO-CONFERENCING TO REMOTE HEALTHCARE FACILITIES
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Implementing Video-Conferencing to Remote Healthcare Facilities
Executive Summary
This project is about implementing video-conferencing to help enhance consultations, bolster activities and contract services, facilitate patient transfers and connect remote facilities with physicians automatically. An expert or specialist will be staged at one point and connect various remote facilities in the region to develop an avenue through which the interaction between patients and doctors will be enhanced.
The project is aimed at addressing challenges brought about when doctors, physicians and other personnel are required to travel to remote healthcare facilities for consultations, patient operations and contract services. Such challenges to be averted when the project is instituted include individuals developing RUVs when they are forced to travel more than twice in a week to different facilities in the region.
Goals and performance standards as part of the evaluation of the project will be written based on the needs and care services plan. Data collection will be planned to compute the performance. Resultant data will be significant in assessing the results, adjusting the procedure of the plan, and planning the outlook of the program in future.
Introduction
Currently, doctors, physicians and other healthcare are forced to travel to different regions to offer healthcare services. Travelling from one region to another is challenging is most of the activities end up not being done on time or as is required by the organization. Video conferencing is creation a single remote area where healthcare staff and patients are linked remotely online. It is done such that patients can consult doctors ‘over the wire’. This reduces travelling and hence solves most of the challenges caused during the travelling (TLTD). Moreover, contract services can be easily completed online as one party does not need to be where the other party is to facilitate this. Though video conferencing seems expensive and tedious, it is the utmost solution to reduce travelling and quickly link patients to their doctors.
Situation Analysis
The Rationale
Currently, medical staff is being forced to travel from one region to the other to attend to consultations, bolster activities and contract services, facilitate patient transfers and connect remote patients to facilities with physicians. This creates a situation where doctors RUVs drop due to the travelling. Moreover, in cases where patients are to be operated, they end up being transferred or some die due to lateness/complete absence of a physician. Given that the number of staff to attend to patients has been overwhelmed by their number, it is tricky sometimes for doctors to attend to the many cases. As such, it is significant to develop a way through which such cases and challenges can be dealt with. Therefore, there is need to implement video-conferencing to help connect this remote facilities remotely to healthcare staff.
It is significant that the project be done as it will reduce travelling and quicken consultations between the doctors and patients. In essence, it is a time saving and life saving scheme that aims at catering for the needs of both patients and the healthcare staff. This project should be taken by the organization given that most of those affected are from the organization. The facilities healthcare staff has been overwhelmed and it significant that something is done about it. Video-conferencing is the utmost solution for the organization in dealing with the issue. The number of patients coming for consultations has doubled ever since the facility introduced remote locations for treating patients. Apart from consultations, the number of patients who need specialized treatment and need transfers has also gone up by 20%. This implies that the organizations staff is under pressure to deal with many things at hand at once. As such, it is significant that video-conferencing be implemented.
Feasibility Assessment
Some of the factors likely to affect the project include negative reception by the patients or by the doctors. Meeting on a virtual network may be viewed by some people as not the ‘real thing’. It may make people to shy away or view the program with suspicion. Moreover, the program might render some other program useless or outdated such as the phone. Besides, the existence of other programs might compromise the implementation of video-conferencing as some staff members may be adamant due to the ‘fear of the unknown’. In future, the project should be expanded and made available in all the remote facilities plus other improvements in the viability of the program.
As part of the program, network providers the facility’s management team, patients and the government form the larger part of the stakeholders of this program. This is because in one way or the other, the program affects them. Given that the organization operates in a highly competitive sector, introducing the project will act as a competitive advantage as it will be a solution to the many common challenges facing a pool of healthcare facilities. Additional data for the evaluation phase will be collected from patients and other staff members on how the project has simplified things or made them more difficult. This will be done through customer and staff feedback questionnaires issued periodically. Moreover an effort will be made to establish the outcome/success of the program through face to face interviews and observation also carried out periodically.
Target Group
The project will aim at reaching out to patients, doctors, nurses, physicians and other healthcare staff. This is because; the implementation of the project is deeply rooted in the existing challenges between them. Moreover, they are the direct beneficiaries of the program. For patients, it will quicken the time they are being serviced and reduce long waiting hours. For healthcare staff, it will reduce the workload and reduce travelling.
Goals and Objectives
The purpose of this project is to implement video-conferencing to help enhance consultations, bolster activities and contract services, facilitate patient transfers and connect remote facilities with physicians automatically.
Project Activities
Evaluating Needs
It involves a consideration of the patients served under a facility and the corresponding healthcare staff. The second step in evaluating needs is the assessment of doctors, nurses and any other observed protocol in healthcare provision. This regards any significant needs required to deliver effective healthcare service, the necessary and relevant communications and if physicians need to travel between facilities. Finally, the needs of the organization are evaluated. This includes the financial viability of the organization in relation to how telehealth affects it, whether positively or negatively (Weinstein, 2008).
Developing Services Plan
This entails establishing the services to be offered and how they are to be delivered using video-conferencing. Basically this refers to the clinical assets, there method of delivery, the providers location, the patients location and the rules of delivering the services (Cooperative Telehealth).
Developing Business Plan
This phase helps in predicting the sustainability of the program and in determining in reductions or increases in costs, revenue and the risk assessment that is likely to be impacted y the program. An evaluation of the business plan will be conducted before implementation of the program. This helps to establish a kind of technology that meets the needs of the organization (Weinstein, 2008). It is significant to re-examine obtainable malpractices to make certain that care delivered tech-wise is covered.
Planning Technology
Planning technology first and ignoring the other steps might result in a situation where the technology is irrelevant, expensive and hence, rendered useless. More significantly, a systematic and intent technology plan based on reasonable needs, a service plan, and the business plan is capable of increasing the likelihood of durable sustainability of a video-conferencing program. This phase starts with a review of the priorities established in phase one. This helps in determining the characteristics and conditions of equipment to meet their needs for healthcare provision (Weinstein, 2008). Next, specifications for the equipment needed are will be developed in order to provide the expected results. They will include report generation, patient operation, features, service, quality of performance and the provider operations. After this, interested vendors will now be allowed to demonstrate the performance testing of their equipment.
Training Personnel
The staff needs to be trained in order to prepare them for the introduction of the technology and its use with providers and patients. Thus, a plan will be developed to cater of this. Training will be all inclusive and not for specific sections of the organizations staff. Moreover, training will include all the perceived benefits of the program.
Test Care and Technology Plans
Other people will be allowed to write and review the plan to reduce chances of omissions and other errors possible (Cooperative Telehealth). This also needs to be tested in the implementation chapter. The care and technology plans are supposed to be tested by staging a pilot program with a restricted number of patients and staff members.
Evaluating Outcomes
It is very supportive to determine outcomes significant to patients, providers and the business. In reality, the needs and welfare of all three are mutually dependent and encouraging of the healthcare safety network. Appraisal of outcomes is decisive when performing clinical research and important for the organization in implementing the video-conferencing program. It will be very helpful to reflect on three intended/targeted beneficiaries in the planning process, and to make out three associated sets of outcomes. These are: outcomes significant to patients, healthcare staff and the organization itself. In reality, the needs and welfare of all three are mutually dependent and reciprocally supportive of the healthcare safety virtual network. Assessment of results is decisive when performing clinical research. Moreover, it is helpful for any organization that is executing a telehealth program (Cooperative Telehealth). The plan and the technology will be innovative and fresh to the organization. Thus, there is need to determine if the anticipated results are obtained. Aims and performance standards will be written derived from the needs and care services plan. Data collection will be designed to measure the performance. Resultant data will be significant in evaluating the results.
Budget Information Sheet
Risk Management Matrix
Work Cited
Telehealth Liaison Training and Development. Retrieved from www.setrc.us/indexphp/services/program-planning/ Accessed on 8th October, 2014.
Telehealth Technical Assistance Manual by the Cooperative Telehealth Steering Committee
Weinstein, R. S., (2008). Integrating Telemedicine and Telehealth: Putting it all Together. Retrieved from <www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/18305320> accessed on 8th October, 2014.
