Patient Safety Considerations in Developing Large Telehealth Networks

Telehealth is an emerging area of healthcare delivery that increases access to care, reduces utilization and offers the potential to improve patient safety, especially in rural and remote areas. The existing telehealthcare environment into which telehealth programmes are being implemented is characterized by its variability. Ensuring telehealth programmes maintain current levels of patient safety, or further improve this, requires standardization of the underlying clinical, technology and business processes. In order to achieve this standardization telehealth must be implemented as part of a ‘systems’ approach to healthcare transformation. Patient safety is an important driver that can help ensure the design, implementation and operational integrity of telehealth programmes conform to this systems approach. It cannot be assumed that existing clinical risk management and patient safety processes within legacy healthcare platforms offer the structure, process and outcomes that are necessary to ensure telehealth programmes are implemented and sustained in a safe, appropriate and effective way.