Home health visits using a cable television network: user satisfaction.

There are about 1.5 million home patients who receive home health care (nurses visiting patients in their homes) in the US each year. In a significant proportion of these visits, hands-on care is not needed. Rather, the nurse needs to verify compliance with medication regimes, assess mental or emotional status, or check blood sugar levels, blood pressure and the like. Many of these activities might be handled by a nursing visit using interactive video to the patient's home, saving the nurse's time wasted in driving, finding parking, etc. A system for delivering home health care using interactive video has been piloted in the state of Kansas. Using the local cable television infrastructure for audio and video transmission, this system permits a nurse to see patients in their homes for a fraction of the cost of an on-site visit. This new method of delivering home health care is being evaluated with an ongoing study of utilization and user satisfaction. We conducted a prospective survey administered to home health nurses (n = 2) and homebound patients (n = 3) using a cable TV-mediated interactive video system, to assess utilization and user satisfaction with televideo-mediated home health care visits. One hundred and eighty-one patient questionnaires and 193 nurses questionnaires were completed. The average length of a visit was 15 minutes (range 1-91). All mean scores tabulated for the questions indicated strong nurse and patient satisfaction with the system. Participating nurses and clients were satisfied with the televideo encounters. The mean score for all questions was better than neutral. Recognizing that this was a pilot study, hampered by small numbers and subject to the inherent biases of a single institution study, the results support further investigation and implementation of this modality for home health care.