Collaborative Releases Guidelines for Delivering Remote Care to Seniors

Published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, an article described a set of principles developed by the Collaborative for Telehealth and Aging that aim to ensure remote care is offered to seniors safely and effectively.

To help address the healthcare challenges that came with the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth adoption and use increased dramatically. And, although older adults were unlikely to use virtual care prior to the pandemic, they partook in this uptake. They reported benefits such as faster referral times, reduced need for travel, and lower costs. However, various challenges still hamper virtual care delivery to seniors.

The Collaborative for Telehealth and Aging was created in September 2021, when nonprofit organization West Health gathered a group of cross-disciplinary experts with the intention of improving telehealth use in senior care. This group includes providers, experts in geriatrics and telehealth, and others.

“We’ve seen how telehealth can be a vital tool for caring for older adults, particularly those who are homebound, lack transportation, have mobility challenges or live in rural areas where specialists may be non-existent or difficult to access,” said Liane Wardlow, PhD, senior director of clinical research and telehealth at West Health and a lead author of the article, in a press release. “The challenges older patients experience with telehealth aren’t insurmountable; they can be addressed by designing remote care in a more intentional way.”

After over a year of work, the collaborative developed a set of principles and guidelines for telehealth implementation in the senior care arena. There are three principles that offer rules for guiding behavior, along with guidelines that provide specifics for each principle.

The first principle states that telehealth should be person-centered, meaning that it should be designed to address the needs of older adults through the consideration of their goals, readiness with technology, and other factors.

The second principle states that telehealth should be equitable and accessible. This means that virtual care programs should consider individual barriers to care related to equity and access.

The third principle states that telehealth must be coordinated across systems and people. Its implementation should aim to lessen fragmentation, enhance data sharing, improve communication, and direct attention toward sustainability.

In the future, the Collaborative for Telehealth and Aging plans to work on operationalizing the recommendations.

“We recognize that creating and implementing solutions that adhere to the general principles and guidelines will depend greatly upon local context and the unique circumstances of health systems and the patients they serve,” Wardlow said.

Research has shown that satisfaction with telehealth is high among seniors.

A study published in October 2022 found that although patients older than 65 generally preferred in-person care, they were satisfied with telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Researchers reached this conclusion after providing over 200 patients, all of whom had participated in a phone-only or video visit, with a questionnaire related to satisfaction. The survey results showed that the median score was six on a seven-point scale.

However, they also found that non-White patients reported a lower average satisfaction score than non-Hispanic White patients. Survey participants reported issues related to technical difficulties.