From the Guidelines
Telehealth has a profoundly positive impact on health equity, cost-effectiveness, and accountability in healthcare delivery, as evidenced by the most recent and highest quality study published in 2022 1.
Key Benefits of Telehealth
The benefits of telehealth are multifaceted, including:
- Expanding access to care for underserved populations, such as rural communities and individuals with mobility limitations, thereby improving health equity 1.
- Reducing expenses for both patients and healthcare systems by eliminating travel costs, decreasing no-show rates, and potentially preventing emergency department visits through timely interventions 1.
- Enhancing transparency through digital documentation of interactions, enabling quality monitoring through data collection, and facilitating patient engagement through convenient follow-ups 1.
Implementation Considerations
For effective implementation, healthcare organizations should:
- Invest in secure platforms to ensure confidentiality and data protection 1.
- Provide staff training to develop the necessary skills for telehealth delivery 1.
- Develop clear protocols for determining appropriate telehealth cases to ensure equitable access to care 1.
- Establish contingency plans for technical difficulties to minimize disruptions in care 1.
Addressing the Digital Divide
To address the digital divide and ensure equitable implementation, it is essential to:
- Provide technology resources and training to underresourced populations 1.
- Support expansion of infrastructure to improve digital literacy and access to care 1.
- Offer financial support to provide telehealth services to all patients, regardless of their socioeconomic status 1. By prioritizing these considerations, telehealth can serve as a valuable tool for creating more equitable, cost-effective, and accountable healthcare systems.
From the Research
Impact of Telehealth on Health Equity
- Telehealth has enhanced the delivery of and access to healthcare services, but its delivery has not been equal for everyone 2
- The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of telehealth in delivering healthcare services, but it has also led to unintended consequences such as inequity issues and an increase in the digital divide 2, 3
- Telehealth practitioners and system designers need to purposely design for equity as part of achieving broader health system goals 2
Cost-Effectiveness and Accountability
- There is limited research on the cost-effectiveness of telehealth, but it is believed to have the potential to reduce healthcare costs and improve health outcomes 4
- A framework to guide organizational telehealth integration is needed to support safe, accessible, and high-quality telehealth to patients regardless of social and/or economic status 4
- Clear and standardized definitions of telehealth and its components are necessary to create an unambiguous environment for clinical care and to enable researchers to have more precise control over their investigations of telehealth 5
Key Considerations
- Health system concepts including technology, financing, access to medical supplies and equipment, and governance capacity can all impact the delivery of telehealth services 2
- Telehealth models should be designed to address the complexity of telehealth implementation in health care organizations and to support safer, more equitable, higher-quality telehealth 4
- Advanced practice nurses should engage in broad policy initiatives to address social determinants of health care and to promote health equity through telehealth 3