Telehealth: Improving Access To Quality Healthcare In Rural Areas Through Essay.

Telehealth is a project introduced to improve access to quality healthcare in rural public hospital or health

service. When healthcare professionals are separated by long distance make very hard for them to communicate to deliver a high-quality health or related processes, such as education. This project introduced as a way of information and communications technologies to overcome that distance.

Telehealth can be a real-time, convenient, and cost-effective alternative to the more traditional face-to-face way of providing healthcare, education and professional advice. It can help to remove many of the barriers currently experienced by health professionals and consumers, such as distance, time and cost, which can prevent or delay the delivery of timely and appropriate healthcare services and educational support. The objectives of using Telehealth are to improve patient outcomes, drive greater efficiency in the way health care is delivered and support the delivery of the quality health care across the state.

Currently funding is being sought to build Telehealth project links urgent care centres across the rural Region with the emergency department at nearest hospital via videoconferencing. We will assume that the funding has been approved and that you are the business systems analyst assigned to scope out the project.

You are required to write a report on it.

Telehealth refers to the provision of health care at distance through utilization of information as well as communications innovations. The department of the emergency Telehealth is the creative and innovative current after-hours clinical services which utilize video conferencing and currently is present at Urgent Care Stations in the regions of Australia such as Gippsland zone (Fleischman et al., 2016). This service of After-Hours Clinical care is offered by Emergency department medical specialists from La Trope Regional Clinical premises Traralgon to victims in UCCs after hours. This service takes place within the range of hours from 9.00 pm and 7.00 am for Triage classifications 4, as well as 5, are meant for patients with less urgency who can visit the clinical officer within a time frame of 1 to 2 hours. A medical expert from La Trobe Regional healthcare in Traralgon will view the UCC victim by video link by utilizing a prac-cart or video conferencing unit (Wade et al., 2010). Telehealth offers video consultation amongst the doctor as well a patient mostly after hours or when a relevant distance is concerned. The victim information is faxed to the LRH by the clinical staff who is responsible for linking with the Emergency Department via telephone to put in place a video conference link.

This project is aimed at alleviating the needs on rural GPs in delivering after-hours care in the smaller rural society healthcare and again to offer an alternative for traveling long distances for after-hours clinical help at the zonal station for the residents of those same areas. The referral healthcare centers utilizing the telehealth have certified nurses lacking medical personnel. Telehealth is utilized in various forms around the globe o overcome the obstacle of distance to hospitals (Smith, 2016). This can be evidenced in remote regions of Australia for some period and currently is spreading across the entire country.

Stakeholders refer to the person who either cares about or has invested desire in your plan. In order words, they are individuals who are attentively concerned with the task of the project or posses something to either benefit or loss due to the result of the plan. The project sponsor is one of the stakeholders who acts as the executive of the firm with responsibilities of assigning resourcing as well as enforcing making of decisions concerning the project (Brooks et al., 2012). The client is also part of the stakeholder, project administrator, plan team member, as well as manager from other sections in the firm are stakeholders too. Let’s consider a stakeholder map diagram below.

Figure I

The telehealth is the main project on the subject and its comprising of various stakeholders including the external as well as internal stakeholders.

The internal stakeholders include the following:

The management team which incorporates the executive management and functional management in running the project. The management is here is entailed to ensure the set objectives and the expected activities are carried out correctly. They also consider the requirement of the users and provide the services within the set time as well as the within the budget.

Stakeholder Map

The operation team consists of support staff and the sales team, this department is concerned with undertaking the current ongoing operations needed for the delivery of goods and services. They are also involved in processing programs for entry to a specialist society, devising a data security rules for a firm, advancing the strategies of research methods, developing programs for patient admissions in healthcare and also supplying the goods to the healthcare among others.

The owner's stakeholders constitute of a board of directors and venture capitalist among others.  The board of directors is responsible for ensuring the realization of the success of the project, maximizing the opportunities of success the desire of both the clients and the suppliers of the project. In short, the board of directors is involved in offering overall direction as well as management for the plan.

Vendors include the partners and suppliers who ensure that the goods are delivered in time and in the correct regions that in need.

External stakeholder includes the following:

The community which consists of the special interest individuals and citizens. The community is the individuals who pass through procedures of telehealth in order to get medications over the process. Just like any other population, the community has different groups with various interests and need to be fulfilled.

Patients – these are the victims and the whole process is designed to reach them and assist where possible. The patients are assisted by the local nurses to access the service if there is a need instead of traveling long distances to other regions.

The government consists of the local and the federal. The government formulates the rules and policies that need to be followed in delivering the service to patients. It also offers the security to the gadgets, the staff and funds in order to execute the project appropriately.

Competitors which includes both the local as well as the international competitors. These aids in advancing the provision of services to the patients since through competition new technology are discovered and incorporated so as to improve the services (Darkins, 2014).

The questionnaire refers to the study instrument comprising of various questions in order to get feedback on the certain issue. The telehealth has several shortcomings that the management need to understand and put the appropriate effort in order to fill those gaps. Some of the problems or challenges of telehealth include the issue of broadband, the engagement problems of physicians and mismanagement of victims among others (Hirani et al, 2017). In this case, the questionnaire is going to set for the patient stakeholder for they interact with the system on daily basis to get their views and what they expected in future for the betterment of the system.

The following questionnaire expects the patients to fill correctly and to the best of their knowledge so as to get the challenges they are experiencing and the suggestions in order the system to improve in future. Kindly answer all the questions correctly.

1. How does the telehealth improve access to medical services?
2. How does the telehealth conserve time instead of traveling to the hospitals?

• How easy is it use the telehealth systems?

1. Has the state of healthcare improved due to the introduction of the healthcare system?
2. Does the telehealth system interact with you smoothly and pleasantly?
3. Does the system satisfy your needs?

• Does the system allow you to converse with medical staff appropriately?
• Are you able to hear every detail the doctor is telling over the system?

1. Are you capable of expressing yourself over the system?
2. Does the telehealth system satisfy your needs?

The functional requirements refer to the desired operations of the project within actual parameters so as to ensure the design is adequate to meet the desired result and the products correspond the needed design so as to satisfy the need of the clients. The functional requirements of telehealth include:

Adding the patient to the system and the nurses in the local regions must supply the login credentials in order to uphold the privacy of each and every patient.

Search – the system should allow the nurse to look for the desired and scheduled doctor in order to meet the requirements of the user.

The system should have strong bandwidth so as to provide quality video, conversation with the patient in order to avoid the inconveniences (Li, 2016).

The following is an illustration of the telehealth by use of a use diagram.

Figure II

Table I

Table II

Table III

References

Brooks, E., Manson, S. M., Bair, B., Dailey, N., & Shore, J. H. (2012). The diffusion of telehealth in rural American Indian communities: A retrospective survey of key stakeholders. Telemedicine and e-Health, 18(1), 60-66.

Christensen, H. B., Hansen, K. M., Kyng, M., & Manikas, K. (2014). Analysis and design of software ecosystem architectures–Towards the 4S telemedicine ecosystem. Information and Software Technology, 56(11), 1476-1492.

Darkins, A. (2014). The growth of telehealth services in the Veterans Health Administration between 1994 and 2014: a study in the diffusion of innovation. Telemedicine and e- Health, 20(9), 761-768.

Fleischman, A., Hourigan, S. E., Lyon, H. N., Landry, M. G., Reynolds, J., Steltz, S. K., ... & Ludwig, D. S. (2016). Creating an integrated care model for childhood obesity: a randomized pilot study utilizing telehealth in a community primary care setting. Clinical obesity, 6(6), 380-388.

Hirani, S. P., Rixon, L., Cartwright, M., Beynon, M., & Newman, S. P. (2017). The Effect of Telehealth on Quality of Life and Psychological Outcomes Over a 12-Month Period in a Diabetes Cohort Within the Whole Systems Demonstrator Cluster Randomized Trial.

JMIR Diabetes, 2(2), e18.

Smith, I. H. (2016). From Cultivation to Consumption: Linking Urban Agriculture, Nutritional Sciences, Environmental Sciences, and Telehealth to Food Deserts and the Social Determinants of Health. Journal of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, 5(1), 20-24.

Wade, V. A., Karnon, J., Elshaug, A. G., & Hiller, J. E. (2010). A systematic review of economic analyses of telehealth services using real time video communication. BMC health services research, 10(1), 233.