Drawn up by the Good Governance Institute, the report, entitled Better Care For People With Long-term Conditions, highlights the challenges that currently exist in the healthcare sector and includes a set of detailed recommendations to ensure those deploying telehealth services address critical governance, quality and safety issues.
Key elements include two Board Assurance Prompts (BAPs) and an auditor briefing document, specifically designed to aid telehealth project implementation and provide boards with the tools they need to ensure their programmes deliver safe, appropriate and efficient care. The BAPs address telehealth deployment and the wider issue of long-term conditions management, offering a framework to help trusts meet essential standards.
Telehealth is not just the application of new technology to old service modalities, but a revolutionising of the care pathway, and ultimately what it means to be a patient
Andrew Corbett-Nolan, chief executive of the Good Governance Institute, said: "We found that, in the main, telehealth was being introduced as a cost containment tactic, rather than being seen as a strategically-significant step that had implications across many of the longer-term aims of health economies. The report describes the significant shift in service thinking that will need to take place to meet care needs and how this technology has the potential to deliver a real breakthrough in service delivery, revolutionising patients' care pathways by empowering patients, reducing dependence on hospital-based services and promoting continuity of care."
We found that, in the main, telehealth was being introduced as a cost containment tactic, rather than being seen as a strategically-significant step that had implications across many of the longer-term aims of health economies .
Currently, across England, 75% of NHS resources are spent supporting more than 15 million people with chronic long-term conditions. Dr John Bullivant, chairman of the Good Governance Institute, said: "Telehealth is not just the application of new technology to old service modalities, but a revolutionising of the care pathway, and ultimately what it means to be a patient. It has the potential to provide more personalised care that genuinely empowers patients and produces outcomes that matter to those using services."