Audrey Kinsella, Research Director and lead writer for “Information for Tomorrow” a home telehealth program planning services, has developed the newest installment “Telepalliative Home Care”. This installment is featured on the “Home Telehealth Community of Care” web page available at www.informationfortomorrow.com/community/0512-PalliativeCare.html.
As Kinsella points out, “Today, palliative care is being seen as more and more focused not on the end of life, like hospice, or even the final year of life, but on the longer period of in-between formal care in home healthcare and hospice.
The healthcare delivery system in the last few years has been changing and evolving. Today, there is the ever increasing need to care for patients living with complex chronic diseases from the time of their diagnosis until the end of their lives.
As a result, there has been a monumental growth of palliative care training programs, widespread development of Patient-Centered Medical Homes using a team approach to care for patients outside of acute care settings, and the legislative requirement for Accountable Care Organizations to provide comprehensive care throughout an individual’s lifetime.
The new web page has several segments such as:
- Palliative Care: What is It?—Provides a grounding in the development of palliative care service training and delivery and details on the number of potential patients that may be served
- Palliative Care: Tools to Help Deliver Services—Profiles new tools to help deliver needed care and help to make living comfortably with long term conditions possible for patients and their families
- Look Homeward—Presents experiences of working with home-based patients receiving palliative care
- Coming Home—Deals with focusing not only on symptom managements but also assisting with patients’ broader, day-to-day living circumstances that they face
As Kinsella notes, the “Home Telehealth Community of Care” web page also has information on diabetes and telehealth, falls among the elderly, home telehospice, and other issues of concern in home healthcare and health technology applications for the home.
For more information, contact Audrey Kinsella at 828-252-8571 or email telehealthcare@lycos.com.
