Context for Virtual Care
Virtual Care can help clinicians continue to care for patients at-home while removing barriers of time, distance, PPE, and provider scarcities. When investing in virtual care, healthcare organizations should consider an ROI which we refer to as a “return on impact” – meaning, understanding how technology will impact the timing and quality of care delivered.
Example Success Measures
- Time to Consult Fulfillment: Benchmark time duration between consult request and provider response vs. less dynamic, non-video platforms such as in-person or telephone consults.
- Patient Engagement: Assess each patient’s level of interaction in the communication program. The messaging can be adjusted if the administrator sees that the patient is not opening or taking action with each message. And, the administrator can request that a home health nurse intervenes to check on the patient and determine if a different level or type of care is quickly needed.
- Patient Adherence: Track patients’ adherence to treatment to demonstrate how your post-hospital discharge program (or Hospital- and SNF-at-Home model) impacts medication management, adherence, and compliance.
- Patient / Family Caregiver Satisfaction Rates: Track patient satisfaction and loyalty from the convenience of being able to safely access care on-demand.
- Readmissions Rate: Measure readmissions rate to evaluate how post-discharge programs are preventing penalties, keeping patients at home, identifying when interventions are needed, avoiding care escalation, and freeing up bed space.
- Staff Utilization: Measure the re-distribution of staff, the load-balance resources across entire systems, and increase in patients reached with less strain on specialist resources. Analyze staff’s rate of adoption and utilization of the platform as well as feedback on how the platform enhances workflows / processes.
- Staff Satisfaction Rates: Track staff satisfaction with the ability to deepen engagement with patients and also provide a safe, convenient method to conduct an appointment if/when in-person visits are restricted.
- Agency Brand Equity and Referrals: Provide referral sources with demonstrated outcomes (especially in terms of reduced rehospitalizations) to build new and strengthen existing relationships in the community. A referring partner values agencies’ ability to help minimize the “revolving door” of readmissions and strengthen the partner’s reputation within the community. By implementing a virtual care platform, home health agencies can strengthen their own reputation versus other agencies competing for the same referral stream.