The Challenges of Implementing Telehealth Services

Telehealth platforms have been in the industry for a while but have only just began getting rapidly adopted over the last three to five years.

So, what led to the increase in adoption? And while many are boasting about the benefits of such services, what are some challenges in this technology and its implementation?

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Niki Buchanan, general manager of population health management at Philips Healthcare, told Healthcare Analytics News™, that because the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services this year acknowledged telehealth as a way to serve patients better outside of hospital settings and aligned it with incentives and reimbursement models, we will see a rise in remote patient monitoring.

And while studies have found that patients are satisfied with post-surgical telemonitoring and follow-up care and that the services can be beneficial for those in rural populations with limited resources and access to receive care, there are still many challenges that need to be overcome.

For one, Buchanan said that there is a change-management issue that must be recognized from the leadership teams of Integrated Delivery Networks and health systems.

Clinicians need to be more involved in the process of how the technology should be implemented into their workflows.

Once implemented, the clinicians and patients need to know how to get the technology and how to use it. It is also necessary to make sure the patients using the services are the patients that can benefit from it.

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