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Increasing Telehealth Access to Care for Older Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic at an Academic Medical Center: Video Visits for Elders Project (VVEP)

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic led to a significant increase in ambulatory virtual care, threatening access to care for older adults with lower digital literacy. This report describes the Video Visits for Elders Project (VVEP), a quality improvement effort to help older adults access video visits...

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Autores principales: Chu, Janet N., Kaplan, Celia, Lee, Jonathan S., Livaudais-Toman, Jennifer, Karliner, Leah
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Joint Commission. Published by Elsevier Inc. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8645266/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35027304
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcjq.2021.11.006
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author Chu, Janet N.
Kaplan, Celia
Lee, Jonathan S.
Livaudais-Toman, Jennifer
Karliner, Leah
author_facet Chu, Janet N.
Kaplan, Celia
Lee, Jonathan S.
Livaudais-Toman, Jennifer
Karliner, Leah
author_sort Chu, Janet N.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic led to a significant increase in ambulatory virtual care, threatening access to care for older adults with lower digital literacy. This report describes the Video Visits for Elders Project (VVEP), a quality improvement effort to help older adults access video visits at an academic primary care practice. METHODS: We reached out to empaneled older adults (≥ 65 years) who had a scheduled visit between March 30 and June 12, 2020. We assessed patients’ readiness to engage in a virtual visit and offered to walk them through accessing the platform if they owned a compatible device. We evaluated outcomes of those phone calls and actual visit completion. RESULTS: Between March 26 and June 3, 2020, we called 1,427 patients, reaching 1,025 (71.8%). Of those reached (mean age 75.6 years), 312 (30.4%) were already video-enabled, 192 (18.7%) asked for technical assistance, 185 (18.0%) did not have access to an electronic device, and 336 (32.8%) declined assistance. Of those reached, 40.4% completed their visit by video, 26.5% by telephone, and 1.4% by in-person visit, while 29.6% canceled and 2.1% no-showed. CONCLUSION: VVEP successfully innovated to promote equitable access to telemedicine for vulnerable older patients in a time of crisis. Almost half required technical assistance or did not have access to a compatible device to engage in virtual care. As telemedicine will continue to play an important role in access to clinical care even in a postpandemic world, it is imperative for health systems to focus on technological need to promote equitable access to care for all patients.
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spelling pubmed-86452662021-12-06 Increasing Telehealth Access to Care for Older Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic at an Academic Medical Center: Video Visits for Elders Project (VVEP) Chu, Janet N. Kaplan, Celia Lee, Jonathan S. Livaudais-Toman, Jennifer Karliner, Leah Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf Improvement Brief BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic led to a significant increase in ambulatory virtual care, threatening access to care for older adults with lower digital literacy. This report describes the Video Visits for Elders Project (VVEP), a quality improvement effort to help older adults access video visits at an academic primary care practice. METHODS: We reached out to empaneled older adults (≥ 65 years) who had a scheduled visit between March 30 and June 12, 2020. We assessed patients’ readiness to engage in a virtual visit and offered to walk them through accessing the platform if they owned a compatible device. We evaluated outcomes of those phone calls and actual visit completion. RESULTS: Between March 26 and June 3, 2020, we called 1,427 patients, reaching 1,025 (71.8%). Of those reached (mean age 75.6 years), 312 (30.4%) were already video-enabled, 192 (18.7%) asked for technical assistance, 185 (18.0%) did not have access to an electronic device, and 336 (32.8%) declined assistance. Of those reached, 40.4% completed their visit by video, 26.5% by telephone, and 1.4% by in-person visit, while 29.6% canceled and 2.1% no-showed. CONCLUSION: VVEP successfully innovated to promote equitable access to telemedicine for vulnerable older patients in a time of crisis. Almost half required technical assistance or did not have access to a compatible device to engage in virtual care. As telemedicine will continue to play an important role in access to clinical care even in a postpandemic world, it is imperative for health systems to focus on technological need to promote equitable access to care for all patients. The Joint Commission. Published by Elsevier Inc. 2022-03 2021-12-05 /pmc/articles/PMC8645266/ /pubmed/35027304 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcjq.2021.11.006 Text en © 2021 The Joint Commission. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Improvement Brief
Chu, Janet N.
Kaplan, Celia
Lee, Jonathan S.
Livaudais-Toman, Jennifer
Karliner, Leah
Increasing Telehealth Access to Care for Older Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic at an Academic Medical Center: Video Visits for Elders Project (VVEP)
title Increasing Telehealth Access to Care for Older Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic at an Academic Medical Center: Video Visits for Elders Project (VVEP)
title_full Increasing Telehealth Access to Care for Older Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic at an Academic Medical Center: Video Visits for Elders Project (VVEP)
title_fullStr Increasing Telehealth Access to Care for Older Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic at an Academic Medical Center: Video Visits for Elders Project (VVEP)
title_full_unstemmed Increasing Telehealth Access to Care for Older Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic at an Academic Medical Center: Video Visits for Elders Project (VVEP)
title_short Increasing Telehealth Access to Care for Older Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic at an Academic Medical Center: Video Visits for Elders Project (VVEP)
title_sort increasing telehealth access to care for older adults during the covid-19 pandemic at an academic medical center: video visits for elders project (vvep)
topic Improvement Brief
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8645266/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35027304
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcjq.2021.11.006
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