Abstract Background This study aimed to understand rural family doctors’ expectations for elderly telehealth management, provide a reference for constructing a suitable remote health management model for the rural elderly in China, and improve the quality of rural elderly home care. Methods Objective sampling was used to conduct semi-structured interviews with 13 rural family doctors in Henan province, and the themes were summarized using Colaizzi analysis. Results Four themes and nine subthemes were extracted. Rural family doctors (a) had limited knowledge of telehealth management; (b) exhibited a strong willingness to apply remote health management; (c) had specific expectations for the content of remote care (daily life care guidance; remote chronic disease health management; remote home safety guidance; remote home exercise instruction; and remote psychological support); and (d) expected remote health management implementation support (setting up a multidisciplinary team and using the “village doctor” as a link for offline follow-up). Conclusion As some rural family doctors know little about telehealth management, the publicity of telehealth management should be strengthened. Furthermore, the content of remote health management for the rural elderly should reflect the characteristics of comprehensiveness and practicality, establish a multidisciplinary team as a guarantee, and adopt the mode of “online consultation plus offline follow-up” with rural family doctors as the intermediary, so as to ensure the quality of remote care and promote the improvement of the quality of life of the rural elderly as soon as possible.
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DU et al. (2024) studied this question.
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